The backup supports two scenarios; Clone operation and Backup operation. Both are archives and can be restored in case something happens to the machine and the IFS Home needs to be restored.
Creates an archive of everything that exists in the IFS Home. A backup can be restored in the same location as the previous installation and on the same host or it can be restored in the same location as the previous installation on another host. Do note that a backup can never be restored to another location on disk, the paths must always remain the same.
Creates an archive containing required files to recreate an IFS Home based on an existing IFS Home.
The following lists how a clone can be used and what the result is.
1: In this context, cluster refers to the internal clusters in IFS MWS, i.e. MainCluster and IntegrationCluster, not horizontal or vertical clustering of an IFS Home.
2: This behaviour can be overriden when restoring the clone, see -keepOhsCert for more information.
There is a script in <ifs_home>/instance/<instance>/bin called 'create_backup' that takes one or more arguments:
>create_backup [options] -backup Prepare a backup of an IFS Home. -clone Prepare a clone of an IFS Home. -update Prepare a clone of an IFS Home that can be applied on an existing clone. Ignored unless used with -clone.
Either -backup or -clone must be passed as an argument.
Example:
>create_backup -backup Creates a backup archive located in <ifs_home>/instance/<instance> >create_backup -clone Creates a clone archive located in <ifs_home>/instance/<instance> >create_backup -clone -update Creates a clone archive located in <ifs_home>/instance/<instance> that can be used to update an existing clone. Note: An update archive in itself can not be used to restore a clone.
The archives for both backups and clones can be modified to include or exclude files. If an IFS Home includes files that are big and not needed in a backup (or clone) it can be
specified in an exclude file. If an IFS Home has dependencies to other files (either in the IFS Home or outside of the IFS Home) these dependencies can be specified in an include file.
Note that a backup takes everything in the IFS Home, so if a dependency is already inside the IFS Home, it doesn't need to be added in the include file.
The name of the include file should be includeList (no suffix) and the name of the exclude file should be excludeList (no suffix).
When the archive is extracted, the files outside of the IFS Home needs to be copied to their correct location manually.
Example: Content of <ifs_home>/instance/<instance>/includeList
C:/path/to/include.file C:/path/to/second/include.file ${ifs.home}/instance/${ifs.j2ee.instance}/somefile.file
The includeList and excludeList can contain the variables ${ifs.home} and ${ifs.j2ee.instance} that is replaced by the value of the IFS Home and the instance name at runtime.
Note: The includeFile and the excludeFile are removed after create_backup script has finished executed.
A backup can be restored by extracting the content of the zip in the same place and on the same host as the previous IFS Home or in the same place on another host. It cannot be restored in another location.
A clone can be restored on any machine and in any location. Run restore_clone.<suffix> in ifs_home.
>restore_clone [options] -instance=<new_instance_name> [OPTIONAL] Restore the clone with a new instance name. -overrideConfig=<path_to_configuration_file> [OPTIONAL] Restore the clone with another configuration.xml file. If specified, the configuration file must exist. -keepOhsCert [OPTIONAL] Restore the clone with the same Http Server certificate as is being used in the cloned environment.
Example:
>restore_clone -instance=myNewInstance Restores the clone with a new instance name >restore_clone -overrideConfig=/path/to/custom/config.xml -keepOhsCert Restores the clone using a customized configuration xml and will keep the HTTP Server certificates.
A clone is restored by using the configuration xml <ifs_home>/instance/<instance>/<instance>_configuration.xml.
This file can be manually edited before restoring the clone or a custom configuration xml and be used to override the existing one. See -overrideConfig flag above.
The configuration file expects the password to be encrypted. For convenience, values prepended with [ENC] will be encrypted in the configuration xml when running restore_clone.<suffix>.
Example:
<ifs.ifsadmin.login>IFSADMIN</ifs.ifsadmin.login> <ifs.ifsadmin.password.encrypted>[ENC]my_super_secret_password</ifs.ifsadmin.password.encrypted>
There is no need to backup cluster nodes. If a node goes down it can be recreated from the cluster zip according to the cluster guide.
Unable to extract archive:
If the archive size is very large (typically a backup archive), some file extractors might not be able to open them. Use a different file extractor.
Failed to install MW Home (Windows):
An IFSHome is registered during installation and if a previous IFS Home has been installed in the same location and hasn't been deleted correctly, the installation will fail.
Change the IFS Home location or go to C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory\ContentsXML\inventory.xml and remove the entry associated with the IFS Home to be reused.
On Linux, the MW Home inventory is located inside the IFS Home so this is very unlikey to occur on any other platform than Windows.
The restore process ended with errors: