New Year’s Database Resolution: Backup! – Part 1

So, it is a brand new year and everyone is making resolutions for their personal and professional lives. Along with going to the gym and learning to fill-in-the-blank better, I want to challenge you to make a goal to backup your database better. (Hopefully, you are already backing up some.)

The easiest way to backup your FileMaker database is to use FileMaker Server. So, if you are not using FileMaker Server, why not? If you are using a hosting provider, then I will assume they are backing up the database for you. (Do you know how often they backup your database?) Otherwise, I assume you are hosting the database on your own server—with FileMaker Server.

FileMaker Server includes “Schedules”, the ability to automatically backup the live database at a regular interval. The database server comes with three schedules already created: Daily, Hourly and Weekly. However, only the Daily schedule is enabled by default. I am going to recommend some changes to the default schedules to improve your database backups.

To view schedules, login to the FileMaker Server Admin Console. Open a web browser directly on the server and type this URL http://localhost:16000. This should display a web page to launch the Admin Console. Of course, you will need the username and password for the Admin Console. Once you login, click on Schedules under Administration in the navigation tree.

To edit a schedule, right-click on it in the list of schedules and select Edit a Schedule. This launches a wizard to walk you through the various options for the schedule. These are the changes I recommend for the default schedules, which will backup the database once per hour for 24 hours, one per day for 7 days and once per week for 4 weeks.

Hourly Schedule

• Select the Backup Folder and Options
  • Maximum number of backup to keep: 23
    Note: The daily schedule will take care of the 24th hour.
  • Verify backup integrity: Checked (by default)
    Note: For large databases you may need to uncheck this option due to the time required to verify the database each hour.
  • Clone the backup file: Checked
• Select the Schedule Details
  • Frequency: Daily
  • Run every: 1 Hours
  • Start time: 12:00 AM
  • End time: 10:00 PM
• Schedule Summary
  • Enable this schedule: Checked

Daily Schedule

• Select the Backup Folder and Options
  • Maximum number of backup to keep: 6
    Note: The weekly schedule will take care of the 7th day.
  • Verify backup integrity: Checked (by default)
  • Clone the backup file: Checked
• Select the Schedule Details
  • Frequency: Weekly
  • Select the days of the week: All days except Sunday
  • Once per day, Start time: 11:00pm
• Schedule Summary
  • Enable this schedule: Checked (by default)

Weekly Schedule

• Select the Backup Folder and Options
  • Maximum number of backup to keep: 4
  • Verify backup integrity: Checked (by default)
  • Clone the backup file: Checked
• Select the Schedule Details
  • Frequency: Weekly
  • Select the days of the week: Sunday
  • Once per day, Start time: 11:00pm
• Schedule Summary
  • Enable this schedule: Checked

This is a great start for your New Year’s Database Resolution. In the next few articles, I will cover other ways to improve on this basic setup including email notification, offsite backup, and drive space. Together, we will help you get your database in good shape to start 2012.