Using Backup and Recovery

The Global Settings - Configuration Data Backup and Recovery page backs up metadata that can be used to recover your configuration settings after a hardware failure. The actual crawled data is not backed up. You should run a backup after making configuration data changes, such as creating or editing sources.

When you perform a backup, Oracle SES copies the data to the binary metaData.bkp file. The location of this file is provided on the Global Settings - Configuration Data Backup and Recovery page. When the backup successfully completes, you must copy this file to a different host.

When the installation completes, copy the metaData.bkp file to the location provided in the Oracle SES Administration GUI. Sources must be re-crawled to see search results.

Notes about backup and recovery 

  • The following configuration files are not backed up:

    • ORACLE_HOME/search/webapp/config/search.properties

    • ORACLE_HOME/search/webapp/config/search.conf

    • ORACLE_HOME/search/webapp/config/ranking.xml

    • ORACLE_HOME/search/data/config/crawler.dat

    If these files are modified, then ensure that you make a backup for them. When you restore the metaData.bkp file to a new Oracle SES instance, you must restore these files as well. Otherwise, you may lose relevant configuration information and will need to change the configuration settings manually.

  • Skin bundles are not backed up. To back up skin bundles, you must use the exportAll operation of the Administration API. See Oracle Secure Enterprise Search Administration API Guide for more information.

  • If you enabled Portlet or Single Sign-On, you need to configure them again on the new instance.

  • If you deployed any crawler plugins or modified the topic clustering dictionary files, then ensure that you make a backup of the ORACLE_HOME/search/lib/plugin directory. In the new instance, you must deploy the files within the plugin directory.

  • You must stop all running schedules before doing the backup.

  • Recovery must be performed on a fresh installation of the same version of Oracle SES that was backed up.

  • Secure search does not need to be reenabled after recovery. If secure search is enabled in the backup instance, you do not need to re-register or re-activate the identity plug-in after recovery. Neither re-activation nor re-registration of the identity plug-in is required. If a plug-in was active when the instance was backed up, then the same plug-in is activated in the recovered instance, using the same parameters.

  • If you have file or table sources residing on the same computer as the one running Oracle SES, and if you intend to use a different computer for recovery, then you must use the actual host name (not localhost) when creating the sources.

  • For database table sources, confirm that the remote tables exist.

  • For file sources, confirm that files and paths are valid after recovery.

  • During recovery, the mail archive directory settings for existing mailing list and e-mail sources is changed. After recovery, the location is cache-dir/mail, which is the default for new e-mail and mailing list sources. Any customized directory locations before recovery is lost.

  • If you recover an instance in a new location, the stopword directory must to be updated to reflect the new location, since it is an absolute path. See "Topic Clustering" for more about stopword directories.

    Note:

    The backup files may contain sensitive information and must be stored in a secure location.

Cold Backups

As an additional precaution to minimize downtime, you can perform a cold backup to backup all the data of an Oracle SES Instance. To back up an instance, you must save a copy of the directories ORACLE_BASE, oraInventory, and oradata.

To perform a cold backup: 

  1. Shut down the Oracle SES instance:

    ORACLE_HOME/bin/searchctl stopall

  2. Log in to the computer as the root user or the administrator.

  3. Copy all the files under the Oracle SES base directory (ORACLE_BASE), the Ora Inventory oraInventory, and the Oracle data storage oradata.

    These locations are specified during the Oracle SES installation. There are several ways to make a copy. For example, using the tar command:

    cd / 
tar cvf ses_orabase.tar  {full path to Oracle base} 
tar cvf ses_orahome.tar  {full path to Oracle home} 
tar cvf ses_orainv.tar   {full path to oraInventory} 
tar cvf ses_oradat.tar   {full path to oradata}

    For example, if the oradata location is /mnt1/oracle/ses/oradata, then save a copy using the command:

    cd / 
tar cvf ses_oradat.tar /mnt1/oracle/ses/oradata

  4. Backup the cached files of sources created before Oracle SES 11g. (Optional)

    If you retain cache files, then users can click the "cached" link in the result list.

    The cache directory location is listed on the Global Settings - Crawler Configuration page. For example, if the cache directory is /mnt1/oracle/ses/cache, then run the following commands.

    cd /
tar cvf cache.tar /mnt1/oracle/ses/cache

  5. Save the .tar files in a safe location.

    Note:

    You can use any compression method to perform file backup. For example, you can zip the files.

To recover files from a cold backup: 

  1. Shut down the Oracle SES instance:

    ORACLE_HOME/bin/searchctl stopall

  2. Restore all backed-up files. First decompress (untar) the files, then move them back to their original locations.

  3. Start the Oracle SES instance:

    ORACLE_HOME/bin/searchctl startall