Admin function for Snow Owl live backup

Up to now the Snow Owl server needed to be shut down for a backup to be performed. Also, backing up the indexes could only be performed via plain file copy. To overcome these issues and provide a way to perform automated backups, we created an admin function to lock the entire repository, which disables the write access to the connected users. This way, users don't need to get disconnected and can continue with read-only operations. A message box informs the users if the try to submit changes to the repository: "Write access was denied due to server maintenance". When the write access is restored the user is also informed by a message.

Message informing users about backup

The administrator needs to perform the following steps for a live backup:

We have provided a shell script for convenience that performs the above mentioned steps. The shell script can be further configured and by adding the script to a cron job, the backup process can be automated.

For further details please refer to the Server Admin Guide.