Hi,
I have a case where DataMiner was set to take a daily full backup without database, but now issues are encountered when the backup is used (specifically unzipping the backup).
The logging information shows that the backup was completed successfully.
Is there any check that can be done to validate the backup, to check if no data was corrupted?
Thank you for the help.
Hi Ben.
Not sure what caused the issue. We were told that to recover an .xml that was missing from the Skyline root folder, they tried to unzip the .dmbackup backup package in order to retrieve this specific file. For some reason the unzipping fail.
Now they fear that the daily backups could be being created with some fault that could prevent them for being useful in the future.
A good way to spot this is precisely what I am looking for.
I have asked for the backup packages to be sent to us for investigation.
Unfortunately the bakcup packages received were fine, so it was not possible to reproduce the issue.
We advised to check and ensure the desitnation folder of the backup packages are correct, and also to check the corresponding log file.
The logging should provide full details on the creation of the backup file.
There are however some “manual” checks you can still do to be certain everything is fine e.g. when you want to use a backup file and you potentially missed the notice that something was wrong with the backup file.
When changing the .dmbackup file to .zip you can open the archive file and look at the content. In the update.zip it will include all the data form your DataMiner and you can search for specific data such as the database data or element files, etc
-> don’t forget to change the extension back afterwards
Some use cases that I’ve seen in the past that could explain this behavior is a copy of our backup files to a network share but using another tool besides DataMiner (otherwise there would be a notice/error in the logging as well).Taking a backup file and copying it manually somewhere could also lead to corruption if it was aborted too soon. Sometimes Windows already created the package but some content is still missing.
A quick check to see if everything is still fine should be the size of the package.
Hi Marlies,
Thank you for the tips. I’ll shared these with the customer.
An additional tip from my side, it is possible to unzip the .dmbackup packages without changing the file to .zip. I use 7-zip and it allows me to do this, not sure if it is specific for this software though.
What was exactly the issue with the backup? I understand from your question that it was not possible to unzip it, but do you know what caused it? I mean, what would be a good way to spot this?
I have heard about use cases where back-ups (that was on a third party system, not DataMiner) were reported to be ok by the software, but the archives turned out to be empty, which was only noticed by somebody after some time. The solution that was put in place in that case was based on the Generic Folder Monitor (https://catalog.dataminer.services/result/driver/4904) driver.