Using Hot Backup as Recyle Bin

[bulent_ozgul]

Backup the system is of course one of the major task for an administrator. There a different type of backup methods. Each method has it's own advantage/disadvantage.

Actually what i wan't to explain in this blog is "Hot Backup" or otherwise how i use it. Before i start i will give you a brief of the BI4 structure. BI4 structure is designed on 2 main layer (at least for me :smile: 😞

The "Filestore". The path of your BI objects (webi reports, universes etc...) where it's stored physically on the disk. Can be the BI server itself disk or also can be a shared network drive.

The "Metadata". The BI environment "ingredients". Which report is in which folder, which users are defined, which user have acces to the report etc...

You can also backup your SIA setting directly from CCM and your Tomcat settings directly from Tomcat folder which are secondary important for me. So what does Hot Backup mean and how does it help us?

I'm using hot backup for "recyle bin". If your "Hot Backup" feature is on (which you can find under "CMC>Settings") your files will be  protected until this duration. So when your duration is set to 11520 (max allowed) minutes, this means your report will be protected for 8 days on the disk.

But this duration is only valid for the "Filestore", the data of the report will be deleted immediately from the CMS "Metadata" database. Therefore you can't see your report on BI Launchpad but it is still on your disk.

Summary; if your hot backup is on and you have deleted mistakenly a report, go to your Audit database. Query the audit db or run the "events audit" report. Search for the report which is deleted. Find the "CUID" of the deleted report. This ID is the same with your reports name. Search the filestore with this name and find & restore your report.You can open the report from Webi Rich Client and restore it.

I will end my post with some screenshots.

1- My reports property shows me the file path on the disk

2- If i look to my Input folder, i will see my file

3- After i delete my report from BI Launchpad, my file still stays on the folder. I was created my report on 14:22. My "Hot Backup" duration was set to 4 minutes.

4- If i look to the Audit report i can see that my file is deleted

5- As you can see the CUID of the deleted file and the filename of my report which is located under filestore are the same: "ab9cqzfkc.....". The event time (delete time) is 11:25 (Audit database stores time data ALWAYS GMT+0)

6- After 4 minutes (14:29) there is no file under my input folder.

* If your Hot Backup is off, the file will be deleted immediately from disk.

* With BI 4.2 there is a new feature called Recycle Bin.

* Version Management is a great feature for really important reports. Check in your important reports, universes at least once.