Preparing for backup and restore
Before you back up or restore data, review the preparatory information required and the tips recommended to ensure successful backup and restore operations. Further, an informed backup plan helps you recover from operational adversities with minimal turn-around.
Before you begin, verify that you meet the specified requirements and have the requisite information to backup and restore data.
At least one of the FTP servers recommended by Ensim
The host name or IP address of the FTP server on which you want to backup and restore data
Your FTP login user name and password
Optional: The complete directory path on the FTP server
Optional: Maximum size of the file being backed up or restored
Note: Various file systems and FTP server utilities have limits on the file size they can handle. If the size of your file exceeds the file management capacity of the file system or the FTP server utility on your server, the file is split into multiple files before continuing with the backup or restore.
Sufficient disk space on the target server to accommodate the data, otherwise the operation will fail.
Review the tips provided in this section to pre-empt backup and restore issues.
Schedule or perform backups during a period of low activity.
Restoring Web sites that reference specified Site IDs (hard-coded) onto a different control panel server renders the site inaccessible. Do not hard-code Site IDs in Web content. Use environment variables provided by the control panel.
Using environment variables, scripts can get and use up-to-date information without having to store that information themselves.
In addition to the standard environment variables, the following three environment variables are available to all scripts on your site:
SITE_ROOT. The root path of your site
SITE_CGIROOT. The top level CGI path of your site
SITE_HTMLROOT. The top level HTML CGI path of your site
It is recommended that content developers use these variables to avoid hard-coding Site IDs. This ensures that path names are always correct, even if those path names change.
Backup and restore of files fail on certain FTP servers. Ensim recommends the use of certain FTP servers for successful backup and restore operations.
Files backed up on WEBppliance 3.0 or 3.1 are incompatible with later versions. Perform a FULL backup of these files on the latest version of the control panel after you upgrade from the older versions.
Backing up data using FTP does not change the permissions of uploaded backup archives. If you want these archives to be secure, you must modify the default FTP permissions as needed.