Set up a Moveware Database and Backup Procedure on a Client’s Server

Purpose 

To detail how Moveware (version 8.0 or greater), it’s databases and backups are currently implemented on client sites that are not on our hosting. 

Client IT administrators will have sufficient knowledge to ensure their offsite backups regarding our Moveware program is performed correctly as it is the sole responsibility of the client to ensure the backup of Moveware and its associated data is being done correctly. 

Scope 

The scope of this post is to illustrate the technical steps of configuring/upgrading Moveware on Workstation for client site.  

Moveware Database 

The Moveware database is setup to work using the following: 

Progress OpenEdge 

This is the coding program that is required to be installed for Moveware and its associated modules (MoveConnect / Web Services) to run.  By default, the directory for this is ‘C:\Progress’. 

Note: The server containing the database will run a different module of Progress compared to the terminal server/workstations – this is required for the Moveware database to run. 

Moveware Code 

This is our compiled code of our program, usually located in C:\Moveware and contains the following subfolders: 

On the database server, we share this folder as \\[server name]\Moveware 

The folder network share is required for clients running workstation copies of Moveware to update their Moveware code daily when the user logs into the system for the first time on a day. 

Moveware Setup Files 

The Folder/file locations specified below, are the default locations for a Moveware client site running a single live database – where Moveware is installed on the C drive and the moveware database and attachment folders are stored in a D drive (data) – your company may differ in locations. 

Moveware Documents / Attachments 

This is the folder location where we store Moveware data, such as the attachments stored using the yellow folder icon in Moveware. 

The location of this folder is viewed in Moveware > Employee Management > User Details > PDF-Path 

This folder is network shared as \\[server name]\MovewareDocs or \\[server name]\MWDocs 

Moveware Database file locations 

Moveware Databases are stored in the following locations 

Moveware Setup Files 

We store the Moveware setup file in the D:\MovewareInstalls folder which contains the Progress Openedge/Crystal Reports/HTML Editor/MovewarePDF installation files. 

We also share this folder on the network as \\[server name]\MovewareInstalls 

For additional installations, this can be achieved by navigating to the shared network folder and running one of the below installation files depending on your requirements 

Standard Moveware Backup Process 

Upon installation of Moveware on a client site, we create a Windows scheduled task (called ‘Moveware Live Backup’) which performs a backup of your live database at 8:05pm daily. 

When this scheduled task starts the following events occur against your live database 

• An online database backup is performed against your live database, and the file ‘moveware.backup’ is stored against your system in the daily Moveware backup file. 

• After-Image files older than a day or two prior to full backup is cleared.  Ideally, we would simply clear all the files as it’s not needed, but we’ve decided to keep these older files just in case. 

Note: this daily backup that overwrites the existing backup file. So, if backup of multiple days is required please contact Moveware support to have this organised. 

In the instance where we need to restore the database, we’ll first restore the database from the moveware.backup file and then apply each after-image file sequentially to the restored database. 

The location of the database file is located as described in 3.2 Moveware Database  

After Imaging backup feature 

In Moveware 8.0 and greater, we enable the After-Imaging feature – an extension of the daily backup which creates a file every hour or 100 megs (whichever is earlier) containing database transactions performed since the last full moveware backup. 

This means if the client server has crashed and we have the latest Moveware daily backup and the after-imaging files – we can restore the database to an image of within one hour of its failure. 

The added benefit of using after-imaging as compared to performing a full database backup every few hours (as some clients have done in moveware V6.2 or lower) is to produce better system performance, by reducing the time taking to complete the database. 

Backup Process and Accountability 

Moveware create a scheduled task to run the backup process as part of the implementation (detailed in ‘Standard Moveware Backup Process’ section), and handed the responsibility of the backup process over the client, to ensure successful backups are completed and stored. 

Overall, the client is solely responsible to ensure their onsite/offsite backups of their data are being performed and monitored. 

If Restoration of the databases or servers from backups is required, Moveware strongly suggest that this is to be completed by Moveware Support, so to ensure Moveware databases are restored and correctly configured. 

Below is a moveware suggested backup guide, where we have listed the priority and severity, and outcome if the backups are not properly backed up or Maintained.  The location of these folders is detailed in Moveware database section of the document. 

Direct Database Backup 

Moveware strongly advises our clients to not perform a direct copy of the database as this may cause the database to shut down as a measure to retain data integrity. 

Restoring the database with a copy of the live database if you managed to make a copy (the actual live files, not the moveware.backup) does not guarantee that there will not be any faults in the database. 

Volume Shadow Copy is not supported by Progress OpenEdge as described in the below link: 

http://knowledgebase.progress.com/articles/Article/000039034

Note the article mentions the use of suspending the database for VSS to work, but we do not advise this as it will lock out the users from the system.  The current online full database backup will achieve the same result at the added benefit of reduced storage space of these backups.  The cost of this being the time taken to restore the database from the backup, which can take up to an hour depending on the database size. 

For systems running data replication for redundancy, on the event that the primary system fails we will ignore the current live database data on the secondary server and will restore the live database on this system from the latest online backup file. 

Backup Actions and Responsibility 

To help clients identify what actions required to be completed by either the Moveware Support or Local Client IT Administrators, below are some common backup actions: