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Symantec Backup Exec issue with BIM Server Files-corrupt

Anonymous
Not applicable
I'm going to throw this out there and see if by chance anyone else is having this issue.
Our Symantec Backup Exec V11d is producing errors with the BIM Server files "data-control" and the "performance.log". The warning is that they are corrupt files and cannot verify.
I can easily tell Backup Exec to skip these files but I wanted to know if this is a good idea.

Does anyone know if these files along with the whole BIM Server install directory are important to ever have to recover a teamwork file? I would like to have Backup Exec skip the whole BIM Server directory installed on the C:Drive. The Teamwork files are saved to another location (D:Drive)

Thanks
8 REPLIES 8
Greg Kmethy
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
Mark,

You do need to back up the whole BIM Server directory. If you only back up the Project folder, then you only get the job half done: You will not be able to restore users, and even restoring the projects is troublesome, since the project database files are specific to a server.

To do a complete backup, you need to stop the BIM server. You can not back up the BIM server while it's running. Could this be causing your problem? You can find the scripts to stop the server here:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/Teamwork/Backup

However, ArchiCAD 14 now has a dedicated backup tool called "TeamworkServerBackupTool". It is really simple to use and does all the task you would otherwise need to do. Read here:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/Teamwork/TeamworkServerBackupTool
Gergely Kmethy
VP, Customer Success, Graphisoft
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank You. I had a suspicion that the backup errors were the result of the BIM Server running while the Backup Exec was attempting to backup but I was thinking the files were in a dormant state. At this point I'll try the stop and start scripts allowing the Symantec software to backup all the main server files opposed to two separate programs backing up.
I'll definitely check out the built in AC14 backup to weigh the differences.
Greg Kmethy
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
I understand that using a separate backup tool for the BIM server when you already have a backup system in place may seem redundant, but there are several cool things about the TeamworkServerBackupTool:

- It knows exactly what files to back up. You don't have to worry about specifying anything else than the target location of the backup.
- It backs up not just the Projects, but Libraries, Users and Custom Properties as well
- It works with the BIM server running. It recognizes if a project is in use, and waits till it's accessible. Users may only notice a short "server offline" while a project is being backed up.
- You can use it to restore just certain projects, or a whole BIM server. You can also restore projects to an existing BIM server, in which case it will add the projects to the existing projects on the server

The only drawback is that it only works with the ArchiCAD 14 BIM server module. It does not support ArchiCAD 13.
Gergely Kmethy
VP, Customer Success, Graphisoft
Anonymous
Not applicable
I finally got a chance to work with the scripts posted on ArchicadWiki and noticed they had them listed incorrectly.

They should be:

sc stop teamworkmessagingserver-v14.0
sc stop teamworkservermanager-v14.0
sc stop teamworkservermonitor-v14.0

there are also v13.0 services running so I included these in the script file but not sure if they are necessary when stopping BIM Server v14.

the other script file would be:

sc start .....same as above.
Anonymous
Not applicable
gkmethy wrote:
I understand that using a separate backup tool for the BIM server when you already have a backup system in place may seem redundant, but there are several cool things about the TeamworkServerBackupTool:

- It knows exactly what files to back up. You don't have to worry about specifying anything else than the target location of the backup.
- It backs up not just the Projects, but Libraries, Users and Custom Properties as well
- It works with the BIM server running. It recognizes if a project is in use, and waits till it's accessible. Users may only notice a short "server offline" while a project is being backed up.
- You can use it to restore just certain projects, or a whole BIM server. You can also restore projects to an existing BIM server, in which case it will add the projects to the existing projects on the server

The only drawback is that it only works with the ArchiCAD 14 BIM server module. It does not support ArchiCAD 13.
There does not seem to be much information about using the TeamworkServerBackupTool. I understand how to run a backup in the terminal from the ArchicadWiki article but, if I wanted to automate the process, how would I go about writing a script to perform a complete BIM Server Backup every day at a certain time on our BIM Server? Would new backup overwrite data from previous day if path is the same?
henrypootel
Graphisoft Partner
Graphisoft Partner
I have used the Windows Task Scheduler to setup automated backups this way. It just runs the teamworkserverbackup application every day at 6pm.
It seems to be working well so far.

It looks as though it does overwrite the existing backup each time(which is what I want it to do), but I would like confirmation on this.

Greg, or anyone else, can you confirm this?
Josh Osborne - Central Innovation

HP Zbook Studio G4 - Windows 10 Pro, Intel i7 7820HQ, 32Gb RAM, Quadro M1200
Ed_Brown
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
Your understanding of the backup tool is correct.
The backup tool will overwrite the existing backups in the folder that it writes to.

Additionally, I have started to more comprehensively describe the backup tool. Some sample backup scripts and a discussion of how to schedule them and what could possibly go wrong can be found from this AchiCAD Wiki link:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/Teamwork/TeamworkMultiBimBackup

There are subject headings that I intend to complete soon....
Graphisoft Technical Support
Ed_Brown
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
A note on the service names. In the backup article I added an admonition that after Hotfixk 6:

The names of the services change
◦TeamworkServerManager becomes TeamworkServerManager-v13.0
◦TeamworkMessagingServer becomes TeamworkMessagingServer-v13.0
◦TeamworkServerMonitorService becomes TeamworkServerMonitorService-v13.0


This may have been too subtle. This change affects the scripts used on the Mac operating system too.
Graphisoft Technical Support