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Question

Laserfiche Restore Process

asked on April 29, 2014

Hi,

I successfully created a backup script (.bat script) and not an sdk script, now am looking to a do a restoration test. I do not know what is the proper process for restoration. 

 

For example someone deleted dozen of files and folder and after say two months later user realized that they deleted the wrong file and in the meantime there took place a "Purge on the Recycle Bin". Is there any easy way to restore (Granular restore option ?) the dozen files.  How would one restore those files what steps/processes to go through, sorry I could not find any detailed KB article relating to how to restore a file after it has been purged and new files added to repository in the meanwhile. 

 

PS: if a file gets deleted and purged, does that file number become available to use by other file or all file numbers on repository are unique ?

 

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Answer

APPROVED ANSWER
replied on April 30, 2014

Hi Sumeet,

 

Because your organization has Rio, this will simplify the process. First you will need to deploy a second Laserfiche Server to be used for backup/restoration testing. Once you've restored the database and volume files, you would then just register the repository on the second Laserfiche Server. Note that when you register the repository, you can choose a different name to indicate that this is the backed up repository. However, there wouldn't be any actual software conflicts if you were to use the same repository name since the Laserfiche Server would be different.

 

Regarding the scenario of then recovering files that were accidentally deleted previously, just locate those files from the restored repository and export them as a briefcase. Then you can import the briefcase into the production repository.

 

Lastly, the entry IDs will not be re-used. When you import the briefcase into the production repository, these will be treated as new documents and will get new entry IDs.

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Replies

replied on April 29, 2014

Laserfiche backups are there to help you recover from a disaster such as an earthquake causing the building with your datacenter to fall over. If that's what you want to do, I'd recommend taking a look at the Repository Backup & Recovery section in the documentation. Also, Zachary Buck taught an excellent class at EMPOWER. You can still get some good information from the slide deck.

 

Probably a reason why you can't find much in the way of guides is because the process is going to be different for each implementation.

 

Basically a backup looks like this:

  1. Backup the file system data
  2. Backup the SQL data

 

You'll need some way to synchronize this with the file system data, otherwise you'll end up with images that have no documents or vice versa.

 

When you've got a reasonably synchronized repository, you should be able to restore them using whatever tools you have available, and hook the repository back up.

 

The scenario you present about restoring individual documents could prove to be very difficult, or even impossible, depending on your environment. One question I have, and maybe somebody from Laserfiche can chime in, is (given Rio) is it possible to attach a restored repository alongside the production one on the same server? It should be possible if you have a second server. The reason I ask that is because you might be able to get both the image and SQL data back, but you can't make actual documents out of them unless you hook them up to the Laserfiche server in order to hook documents back up to the pages and metadata. You could do it manually, but it wouldn't be fun or fast.

 

Making sure that you don't have to do that sort of restore is, of course, a wetware issue. ;)

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replied on April 29, 2014

You won't be able to restore a backed up repository on the same Laserfiche Server that's hosting the production repository. Each repository has a GUID and the Laserfiche Server will not allow two repositories with the same GUID to be registered at the same time.

 

Ideally you would restore the repository on a separate Laserfiche Server and then export the needed documents from it so it can be imported back into the production repository.

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replied on April 30, 2014

Well how do you setup an identical repository/server on the same network, especially when tying in to the Active Directory for authentication, would the same "repository" name not create conflict/chaos on the network ? If not mistaken I will need to have an exact identical LF setup, i have 4 vm's I am enclosing LF into, I will probably have to make a clone of these VM's put them in a separate server/network or even disable network on these VM's and import from old backup and overwrite to these test VM's but is there an easier way ? Say for example have an identical close of LF running on same network where there is a tertiary backup process running and cloning LF from production to this test/backup LF environment over the wire and on same network ?

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APPROVED ANSWER
replied on April 30, 2014

Hi Sumeet,

 

Because your organization has Rio, this will simplify the process. First you will need to deploy a second Laserfiche Server to be used for backup/restoration testing. Once you've restored the database and volume files, you would then just register the repository on the second Laserfiche Server. Note that when you register the repository, you can choose a different name to indicate that this is the backed up repository. However, there wouldn't be any actual software conflicts if you were to use the same repository name since the Laserfiche Server would be different.

 

Regarding the scenario of then recovering files that were accidentally deleted previously, just locate those files from the restored repository and export them as a briefcase. Then you can import the briefcase into the production repository.

 

Lastly, the entry IDs will not be re-used. When you import the briefcase into the production repository, these will be treated as new documents and will get new entry IDs.

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replied on April 30, 2014 Show version history

The only issues you'll face in standing up an identical environment will be the normal problems associated with running cloned VMs.

 

If you are doing DR testing, then you'll need a full environment that's isolated from your main network.

 

If you're just doing individual document recovery, there's no reason you can't build a single VM with only the Laserfiche application server, Client, Admin Console, and SQL Server (even SQL express). You won't need Workflow or any other component. That VM won't need to talk to any other machines aside from basic AD so that you can log in. You could then attach the restored repository and export the recovered documents to a briefcase which you then manually copy to another machine that can talk to the main repository and do an import. There shouldn't be any issues with identical repositories on the network, since they are on separate servers.

 

For future reference, running multiple Laserfiche servers requires Rio.

 

EDIT: Ha! Alexander beat me to it. I knew I shouldn't have taken that phone call while I was typing.

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replied on April 30, 2014

Yes we have RIO and we right now have test environment in process of setting up production environment that was the goal to have another server to use for backups/restore/tests etc. but without physically seeing how restore works hard to imagine the process, backup is relatively easy.

 

Once we have live production server will do up some restoration instructions and will share. I am going to post the backup process batch script i created for users wanting to automate backups without using SDKS.

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