Backing-Up and Restoring Alfresco Community 4.2.e

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davidan

Is there any documentation that describes the COMPLETE backup and restore sequence for Alfresco Community edition?

We are running the out-of-the-box Community 4.2.e, including, of course, the PostGres DB on a virtualized CentOS 6.5 server. I have found documentation that loosely describes the Alfresco folders that need to be backed-up but is vague about the DB backup and the specific steps for ensuring that these are backed-up together:

Here is my objective, if my server, or my Alfresco instance becomes unstable (jacked-up) in some way, I want to be able to restore either onto the same server or onto new server.

I believe that I understand which folders in alf_data that need to be back-ed up. However, I do not know anything about conducting a PostGres DB back-up. The documentation that I have found in the help system simply says to use your your DB systems backup and restore processes. For instance, I see to PostGresSQL folders under my Alfresco-4.2.e folder; one inside that folder, and one in the alf_data folder. What are the steps to ensure that my Content store and SOLR indexes are saved in concert with the DB backup, the steps for this COMPLETE back-up are not written anywhere that I can find so-far.

And also, is anyone using Alfresco BART? Does this work with the Community Edition and does it clarify or simplify as much as one would hope?
 

fsasse

The safest and easiest way I have found, that completely backs everything up, and also restores everything (including the database) is to follow the procedure below.
This is not the most efficient method, and there is downtime of Alfresco during the backup, but your restore WILL work.

To back it up:

1.  Stop Alfresco, and the database (Postgres).  This is a cold backup.
2.  Copy the entire Alfresco directory (tar it up with linux, or copy and zip it up in Windows) to another directory.
3.  Start Alfresco and the database again, so you can start using Alfresco again.

To restore:

1.  Stop Alfresco, and the database (Postgres).
2.  Delete the the current Alfresco directory (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A COPY FIRST)
3.  Copy the backup Alfresco directory to the original Alfresco location.
4.  Start Alfresco and the database.

I have done this on both Windows and linux Alfresco servers and successfully restored several times this way.

Hopefully, an Alfresco employee will answer your post here, with another suggestion, if this simple method doesn't meet your needs.

If you need to do a "hot" backup, you will need to follow a more involved process.