Overview of SAS Backup Manager :: SAS(R) Environment Manager 2.5 Administration: User's Guide

Introduction

SAS Backup Manager is a user interface that enables you to schedule, configure, monitor, and perform integrated backups of your SAS content across multiple tiers and machines. This interface, which is new with the third maintenance release of SAS 9.4, enables you to perform most of the functions of the Deployment Backup and Recovery tool. In previous SAS releases, these functions were available only through batch commands.

To open SAS Backup Manager, click the Side Menu icon

in the SAS Environment Manager banner and select SAS Backup Manager from the side menu. SAS Backup Manager takes several minutes to discover assets in your deployment that are available for backup. You can then access the following pages:

SAS Backup Manager Functionality
Page	Description
History	view a list of backups or recoveries that have been run, are currently running, or are waiting to run view details for a particular backup or recovery operation view information about sources for a particular backup or recovery view a tree diagram of sources for a particular backup or recovery start an immediate backup
Policy	view a tree diagram of currently configured backup sources view details of the current backup policy update the backup policy view configuration information for backup sources
Schedule	view the current backup schedule modify the backup schedule enable or disable scheduled backups

What is Backed Up?

The Deployment Backup and Recovery tool, which is the underlying software for SAS Backup Manager, backs up the following components of your deployment:

the metadata server, including all registered metadata repositories, the repository manager, and the server’s configuration directory.
the contents of the Data directories, SASEnvironment directories, and server configuration directories for each server on the SAS server tier. (If symbolic links in these directories point to other locations, the referenced locations are not backed up.)
the SAS Content Server repository.
the databases that are managed by the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Data Server. By default, all of the databases are backed up.
additional directories under SAS-configuration-directory/Levn as specified by the administrator.

For backups to work, the SAS Deployment Agent must be running on each middle-tier and server-tier host machine. The Deployment Backup and Recovery tool connects with the agent and automatically discovers the tiers in your deployment and their installed components. New components in your deployment are detected automatically and added to the backup. For example, it detects new instances of the SAS Web Infrastructure Data Server and new databases that are managed by the server.

Tip

If you need to exclude specific tiers, servers, databases, directories, or files from the backup, you can do so by using the command sas-update-backup-config.

What is Not Backed Up?

The Deployment Backup and Recovery Tool has the following limitations:

Host machines on which the SAS Deployment Agent is not installed are automatically excluded from backups.
The tool backs up only SAS content and configuration information. It does not back up your SAS software.
If you are using a third-party vendor database (instead of the SAS Web Infrastructure Platform Data Server) for the SharedServices database, the Deployment Backup and Recovery Tool cannot back it up.
The tool does not back up the entire contents of your SAS configuration directories. It backs up only Data directories, the SASEnvironment directories, and the server configuration directories for each server on the SAS server tier.

Tip
To back up additional subdirectories directories under SAS-configuration-directory/Levn, add them with the command sas-update-backup-config.

Default Backup Schedule

By default, the Deployment Backup and Recovery tool performs a backup automatically each Sunday at 1:00 a.m. and retains backup files for a period of 30 days. To change the schedule, you can use either SAS Backup Manager or sas-set-backup-schedule. To change the retention period, you can use either SAS Backup Manager or sas-update-backup-config.

Default Backup Location

By default, backup files are stored locally on the same machine where the backed up component is located. All components are backed up to the following path on their respective host machines: SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Backup/Vault. This directory is created on each machine the first time a backup is executed.

For metadata server backups, the tool uses the backup files that are created by the metadata server backup utility. The tool copies these files to SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Backup/Vault on the metadata server machine. If metadata server clustering is configured, the files are copied to the initially configured metadata server.

About Central Vault Locations

You can also specify a central, network-accessible vault location to store backups. If a central vault is specified, backups are automatically copied from the various host machines to the central vault following each backup operation.

Tip

A central vault location is highly recommended to avoid the loss of backup files in the event that a host machine fails.

If you have a homogeneous operating system environment, you can use either SAS Backup Manager or the sas-update-backup-config command to specify a central vault location. A homogeneous environment is one in which all of the host machines that are included in the backup are in the same operating system family. For example, Solaris and HP-UX machines are both considered to be in the UNIX operating system family.

In heterogeneous (mixed) operating system environments, you must use manual steps to specify a central vault. See “Specifying a Central Vault Location in a Heterogeneous Operating System Environment” in the SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide.

Backup Alert Notifications

An alert email is generated if a backup or recovery is unsuccessful. By default, the email is sent to the system administrator email address that was specified in the SAS Deployment Wizard. You can use either SAS Backup Manager or the sas-update-backup-config command to specify different email addresses.

Accessing Logs

For details about warnings and errors, you can view generated log messages in the following log files:

The following log file is created on the middle-tier machine:

SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Logs/SASServer1_1/SASDeploymentBackup9.4.log

By default, this log reports only errors and warnings. If you want to set different logging levels, you can do so by editing SASDeploymentBackup-log4j.xml, which is located in SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Web/Common/LogConfig/.
For backup, recovery, and purge operations, log files are created in the directories where local backups are stored. The default location is as follows:

SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Backup/Logs/backup-ID
The following log file might be useful to obtain information about server-side activity:

SAS-configuration-directory/Lev1/Backup/backupserver.log

Where to Obtain More Information

See “Using the Deployment Backup and Recovery Tool” in the SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide for more information about backups and recoveries, including:

an overview of tasks for configuring your backup policy and schedule
instructions and syntax for the command-line backup tools
how to manually define a central vault location if you have a heterogeneous (mixed) operating system environment
how to specify a backup user (to access a central vault location or a clustered metadata server in an environment that includes one or more Windows hosts)
how to configure settings to support host machines that use a forward proxy to communicate with the SAS Web Server
how to perform a recovery

The SAS Intelligence Platform: System Administration Guide is available at http://support.sas.com/94administration.