Backing up and recovering the application serving environment
The product uses many operating system and application resources that we should consider adding to the backup and recovery procedures.
(iSeries) Save and restore of WebSphere Application Server resources uses the same IBM i commands used for other IBM i resources.
WAS resources can be saved while the product environment is active. When backing up database data, we may have to shut down some or all services if a snapshot cannot be obtained. This would occur if there are requests which obtain locks or have open transactions against the database being saved. In a distributed environment, you may need to consider how to get a consistent backup across several systems. If the data on systems is not closely related to data on other systems, you may be able to backup each system in isolation. If we need a snapshot across systems simultaneously, you may need to stop activity on all systems while the snapshot is taken.
How often you back up resources depends largely on when or how often you expect them to change.
Tasks
- Back up the product environment configuration.
This category covers the resources that define our WAS operating environment. Once we have done initial setup, this information should change very infrequently. We might backup this information only when we change these settings, and not include these resources in regularly scheduled backups.
- Administrative configuration files
- (iSeries) Administrative configuration
- (iSeries) Servlet configuration files
- (iSeries) Security properties files
- HTTP configuration (see the documentation for our web server)
If we are using the Installation Manager to manage product installations, IBM recommends that you backup the Installation Manager IMShared, and DataAgent directories at the same date and time, especially before and after applying fix packs, ifixes or any installation being used done using the Installation Manager. Similarly if we do a restore of the product environment configuration, IBM recommends that we restore the Installation Manager IMShared, and DataAgent directories at the same time such that the time frame of the two restores matches.
- Back up the applications.
This category covers the applications we run using the product. We should back these up the same way you back up other applications on the system. You could backup these resources every time we add or change an application, or include these resources in a regularly scheduled backup.
- Application deployment configuration files
- (iSeries) Administrative configuration
- (iSeries) Servlet source and class files
- (iSeries) JSP source and generated class files
- (iSeries) Deployed enterprise bean jar files
- Back up the application data.
This category covers the data stores used by our WAS applications. Unless the applications serve only static information, these resources are usually quite dynamic. We should back these up the same way you back up other business data on the system. These resources are suited for inclusion in a regularly scheduled backup.
- Servlet session data
- (iSeries) Enterprise bean data in a database
What to do next
If the applications are using other resources or services that are external to the product, remember to include those in the backup plan as well.
Back up and restore administrative configuration files (iSeries) Backing up and recovering administrative configurations (iSeries) Backing up and recovering JavaServer Pages files (iSeries) Backing up security configuration files Exporting enterprise applications (iSeries) Enterprise beans back up and recovery best practices Restarting an application server in recovery mode Configure transaction properties for peer recovery Session recovery support