This page is to assist us to convert the stock room's software backup plans into a work flow. And have that work flow tested, updated as necessary, and properly documented. Documentation started below.

From "CU Chem Stockroom - Project Outline v2012-11-28v2", pg 2:

Scope of Work => Phase 2: Planning & Design => Task 2.3 – Technical Preparation

Purpose: to coordinate final technical preparation for implementation. This task will confirm hosting location, access, back-ups, etc. It will also determine how many of which QuickBooks licenses CU will require.
Approach: Brightworks expects to gain a better understanding of what will need to occur for this task during the system requirements (task 1.2) and proof of concept (task 2.1) tasks. The technical preparation discussions can start concurrently with the Proof-of-Concept phase so the project teams can gain a better understanding of final project costs as soon as possible.
Deliverable: finalized implementation budget and timeline to +/-10% based on any changes to work identified during this phase.

Considerations and decisions required regarding all backups

Frequency of backups

Confirmation of bakups

Verification of process

End-to-end check
Confirm restore works 100%
- Depends not just on backup, but also on documentation and skill set available

Notification

On postiive? And/or on negative?
Who?

Manual validity checks

Frequency

QuickBooks (QB) on Windows 7 (Win) Virtual Machine (VM)

File back up: QB "company" file

With the data file, a restore gets back the core business data.

Export QB database (DB) to a file.

Copy that file to A&S file server.

Requires account with correct A&S file server access.

VM back up: Win7

With a VM back up, in addition to a data file snapshot (see above), also gets a copy of the structure. Thus consider doing at least whenever there is a change to the structure, such as changes to the QB structure or OS configuration. (And right before major changes to ensure current roll-back image is available!)

Do it manually.

Requires shutting off QB, and takes a while (~1/2 day).

Web kiosks will not be affected during this shutdown. Only staff who otherwise would be using QB would be affected.

Web kiosk server on Linux Virtual Machine (VM)

Q: Bother backing up MySQL database (DB)?

A: Yes! Transaction logs would be valuable in debugging processing problems. Also, logs are depended on when the QB DB is not running (which will be very often- basically when it's not being used).

File back up: MySQL kiosk transaction records

Export MySQL DB to a file.

Copy that file to A&S file server.

Requires account with correct A&S file server access.

VM back up

With a VM back up, in addition to a data file snapshot (see above), also gets a copy of the structure. Thus consider doing at least whenever there is a change to the structure, such as changes to the web (Apache) structure, DB structure (MySQL), or OS configuration. (And right before major changes to ensure current roll-back image is available!)

Do it manually.

Requires shutting off web services so kiosk will not be operational. Although smaller than the QB VM, still will take a while (~1/2 day).

Other

Require structure/ rebuild docs for QB (Brightworks) and Apache/MySQL/PHP?/etc (Gorges).