Backup strategy for JRC under Proxy Replication

There are two options for a backup under Proxy Replication:

1. JCR Backup Manager : using eXo JCR buitin backup capabilities
2. Infrastructure level backup : using an external tool to backup infrastructure storage for the repository

JCR Backup Manager

eXo JCR has capabilities to manage its own backup/restore procedure through the builtin Backup Manager. The main advantage of using it are :

• allows of a workspace at runtime : you don't need to shutdown the service
• is data storage agnostic : you have one single method to backup wether you are using filesystem and/or relational storages

Infrastructure level Backup

Backup strategies based on external to eXo JCR tools (third-party tools), including database and file-system backup may be used as an alternative to the Backup Manager.

Read Only workspace status

The main principle of any infrastructure level backup is to execute the backup while the JCR storage in READONLY status. As no data can be written during the backup process, it is a guaranty of data consistency of the whole repository (including storages and indexes).

The easiest way to set a workspace as readonly is to shutdown the JCR. Alternatively, a workspace can be switched to READONLY mode programmatically with this code :

// setting the repository to readonly
WorkspaceContainerFacade wsFacade = repository.getWorkspaceContainer("workspacename");
WorkspaceDataContainer dataContainer = (WorkspaceDataContainer) wsFacade.getComponent(WorkspaceDataContainer.class);	    
dataContainer.setReadOnly(true);

Backup Procedure

A typical backup procedure involves of file-system backup of index and values in conjunction with backup of the database Workspace storage. Indeed, data integrity must be ensured by the tools you use. Use your native database dump tool and the OS native FS copy command.

Steps to implement infrastructure level online backup:

• make Workspace (or Repository) read-only (read further)
• make copy the folders with index and values;
• make online database backup (JDBC storage);
• make Workspace (or Repository) read-write.