Your DDMS system requires periodic system maintenance to
ensure speed, efficiency, and accuracy in your daily operations. The period
end procedures preserve your data and establish your company's position and
status as of a given fiscal period for financial and management reporting.
These procedures are continually changing as new applications
are added to the system and existing applications are enhanced. For this
reason, checklists of these procedures are not included in the system documentation.
Instead, they are published in Key Ops to ensure you have access to
the most accurate, up-to-date information.
At the end of each year, we publish a special edition of Key Ops that
describes the latest year-end and period-end procedures. You can download
the most
current year-end issue on our Key Ops
Web page.
Other procedures that you will perform on a regular basis
include:
You add vital information to yourDDMSfiles every day: new pick tickets, new invoices, purchase orders, and on and
on. To protect this information, you need to back up these files every day.
Make it a policy to back up:
As part of your day-end procedures
Before you make a mass change
to one of your databases.
Performing regular backups ensures that you have an accurate
and complete audit trail of your business activity. This lets you review or
recover information at a later date without having to recreate it manually.
To help you protect your data, we cover the following topics
here:
It's ultimately your responsibility to determine how much protection you
want to have for your backups. However, DDMS recommends the following:
Have one backup tape for each day of the business week. Rotate these every
week: every Monday you back up on the Monday tape, for example.
Once a week, make a backup that you keep for the entire month.
Once a month, make a backup that you keep.
Make a tape when you do your year-end procedures that you keep.
Keep a few spare tapes at all times. Tapes can break or develop bad spots
at inconvenient times.
Make a policy for retiring old tapes. (Tapes have a definite shelf
life.)
Make a policy for verifying tapes — verify once a week, for example.
(We explain how to verify in the instructions for backing
up and verifying.)
You should also consider off-site storage for your weekly or monthly tapes.
You do not want to lose all of your backups if your building burns or floods.
Retiring Old Tapes
To make sure that your backups will work if you need them, you must consider
tape life. Every time you use a tape, you wear away some of the magnetic media
that holds your data. Opinions vary on how many backups you can reliably make
on a tape, but the documented life for QIC tapes is about 5000 backups.
Tapes also degrade with time, whether you use them or not. Their shelf life
varies widely, depending on care, temperature, humidity and many other factors.
Published opinions on shelf life range from one to 30 years.
You should check with the manufacturer of the tapes you use, and follow their
recommendations regarding the number of backups and shelf life. Create a company
policy for retiring tapes at appropriate intervals.
Some
dealers retire their daily tapes, which see the most use, by periodically
turning them into monthly tapes. After a few months of use, for example, you
might use the old Monday tape as your month-end tape for January, the Tuesday
tape for February, and so forth.
Storing Tapes
Even if you retire your tapes regularly, they can be unreliable if you mistreat
them. To care for your tapes, follow these rules:
Keep tapes in an environment that’s reasonably free from dirt, dust,
fingerprints, food, cigarette smoke and ash, and airborne pollutants.
Do not drop tapes.
Keep tapes out of strong sunlight, and avoid contact with liquids or extreme
heat.
Do not store tapes on radiators, window sills, televisions, electronic
equipment, or machinery.
Put tapes back on their storage shelf when they’re not in use. Do
not store them flat, like plates; place them on edge, like books.
Backing Up and Verifying Data
To back up files on your eNsite Pro server:
Insert a backup tape into your drive.
Make sure that you quit any programs that are currently running, including
the TBL Server. The system will not back up any file that is open.
To close the TBL Server:
Click the TBL Server icon in the lower taskbar.
When the TBL Server window appears, choose File and select
Exit.
At the Warning message, click OK.
Click Start, point to Programs, then Accessories,
then System Tools, and select Backup.
The first time you back up, the Import Media Present dialog box appears.
Check Allocate all compatible import media to Backup.
Click the Backup tab.
Click the C: and D: boxes to back up both drives, as shown
here.
If
you want to back up specific files, instead of selecting the C: and D: drives,
navigate to the folder that contains these files. Then select all
three files that begin with the same name. These three files have
different extensions: .cdx, .dbf, and .key. You must include all three to
obtain the complete file. To back up the !DES file, for example, select
the !DES.CDX, !DES.DBF, and !DES.KEY files, as shown here:
In the Backup Destination box, select QIC or DAT, depending
on the type of tape drive you have. If you're not sure, select QIC.
Click the Start Backup button.
If this is your first backup:
When the Backup Job Information dialog box appears, click the Advanced
button.
In the Advanced Backup Options dialog box, select If possible,
compress the backup data to save space.
Click OK.
If you want to verify this backup:
When the Backup Job Information dialog box appears, click the Advanced
button.
In the Advanced Backup Options dialog box, select Verify data after
backup, as shown here:
Click OK.
In the Backup Dialog Information dialog box, click Start Backup.
The backup begins.
If you're verifying this backup, Windows creates a log file that describes
the backup.
To view the log, return to the Backup program, click the Tools
menu, and select Reports.
Select the backup date, click View or Print, and review
the log to make sure the backup was successful.
Restoring Files
Occasionally, you may need to restore
volumes or files from a backup tape to your system’s hard drive. When
you restore files, remember that each DDMS file consists of three separate
files: a .dbf, .cdx, and .key. To restore a specific file, you must restore
all three DDMS files to your hard drive, or you will only have partial data.
To restore system volumes or individual files, follow these steps:
Insert the tape into your drive.
Make sure that you quit any programs that are currently running, including
the TBL Server. The system cannot restore any file that is open. To close
the TBL Server:
Click the TBL Server icon in the lower task bar.
When the TBL Server window appears, choose File and select
Exit.
At the Warning message, click OK.
Click Start, point to Programs, then Accessories,
then System Tools, and select Backup.
When the Backup dialog box appears, click the Restore tab.
Windows 2000 keeps a catalog of backups. The information you want to
restore must have a catalog entry before you can restore it.
If the information on your tape has been cataloged, you’ll see
two icons in the left pane: a File and a QIC icon. These two icons are
shown below.
If you see only the File and QIC icons, go to Step 8.
If the information on your tape has not been cataloged, you will either
see the New Import Media dialog box, or an Import icon in the left pane.
If you see the New Import Media dialog box, go to Step 6.
If you see the Import icon, go to Step 7.
If you see the New Import Media dialog box, catalog the information on
your tape by selecting Allocate this media to Backup now. This option
is circled in the figure below:
Click OK, and go to Step 8.
If you see the Import icon, click the plus sign (+) next to it
to display the entries.
Right-click the entry you want to restore from, and catalog it by selecting
the Add to Backup Media option, as shown here.
Click the plus sign (+) by the QIC icon to open it.
The cataloged entries on your tape appear in the right pane. Double-click
the appropriate entry. Your system will read the tape, and display the drives
that you backed up.
You can restore an entire volume by selecting the corresponding folder.
You can also choose to restore individual files within a folder.
Double-click the drive that contains the folders or files you want to restore.
If there is more than one entry for the correct drive, as shown below, you
need to check each of them for the folder or files you want to restore.
Once you find the correct drive, open the DDMS folder by clicking it.
A folder for each volume serial included on this backup appears in the left
pane, as shown below.
To restore an entire volume, click the corresponding folder. A blue check
mark indicates that you selected an entire folder.
To restore individual files, double-click the appropriate folder, and then
select the files. If you specify specific files, be sure to select all
three files: a .dbf, .cdx, and .key. If you do not select all three, you
will not restore all the data.
In the figure below, all three of the circled files must be restored if
you want to restore the C-MASTER file. Note that the files you select have
blue check marks, and the folder containing these files has a grey check
mark. The grey check mark indicates that some of the files it contains have
been selected, but not all.
After selecting all the files or volumes you want to restore, select
the appropriate option in the Restore Files To box:
Original location: Restores files to the folders they were backed up from,
and may overwrite existing files with the same name.
Alternate location: Lets you specify a different location for your files.
This option creates the necessary folders within the folder you specify.
If you’re restoring the IN folder, for example, and you select an alternate
location of C:, the system will create an IN folder on C:.
The type of restoration you’re doing is displayed to the right of
the Restore Files To box. The option displayed in the figure below always
overwrites the exiting files with those from your backup tape:
You have three options to choose from:
Do not replace any existing files
Replace files only if the existing file is older
Always replace existing files.
If the displayed option is not what you need, go to the Tools menu, and
select Options. Click the Restore tab, select the appropriate option,
and click OK.
Some
dealers retire their daily tapes, which see the most use, by periodically
turning them into monthly tapes. After a few months of use, for example, you
might use the old Monday tape as your month-end tape for January, the Tuesday
tape for February, and so forth.
