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Title
Best practice procedures to perform backup, restore and disaster recovery redeployment -
Description
This article describes best practice procedures to perform a backup, restore and disaster recovery redeployment of QCS (Quest Collaboration Services) server.
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Cause
To protect the configuration database from power and hardware failures, Quest Collaboration Services is already configured to perform automatic configuration backup and restore operations by default.
All critical data is saved in the database file containing currently existing collections, statistics and the service configuration information.
Automatic backup and restore are enabled by default and the configuration data backup is located in the %Program Files%\Quest Software\Collaboration Services\DataBackup folder. If a failure occurs, the service will automatically detect whether any configuration data is corrupted and perform an automatic restore.
However if the entire QCS server fails due to some hardware issue or another problem occurs that may result in the data loss, the following disaster recovery approach is recommended in addition to the automatic backup of product configuration data. -
Resolution
Performing backup:- Stop and disable all QCS services (Logging Service,Synchronization Service, andWatchdog Service) running on the computer using the WindowsServices snap-in and check whether the Collaboration Services console is closed. You should disable the services for the duration of the backup because otherwise, the Watchdog service will start them again soon after you stopped them.
- Backup the contents of the whole Collaboration Services installation folder (the %Program Files%Quest Software Collaboration Services folder by default) excluding WEB folder.
- Extract the entire HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE\Aelita\AelitaCollaborationServicesregistry key and all subkeys.
- Enable all QCS services and start them again.
Re-deploying Collaboration Servicesto a new computer in case the old computer is unavailable due to disaster or hardware failure:- install Collaboration Services on a new computer. When prompted create a new encryption key file (but do not use it).You must install Collaboration Services to the exact same path (drive and folder) as in previous installation and also specify the same service account granted required permissions as described in the Quest Collaboration Services Installation Guide. The rest of the settings you specify during setup including creation of new public encryption key will not be in effect. Instead, the settings from backup will be used.
- Once Collaboration Services is installed, stop and disable all its services (Logging Service,Synchronization Service, andWatchdog Service) using theServices snap-in.
- Import the entire HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE\Aelita\AelitaCollaborationServicesregistry key and all subkeys from your backup.
- Copy the contents of the whole Collaboration Services installation folder from the backup excluding the entire WEB folder and overwriting all the other files in new installation.
- Enable and start all the QCS services from theServices snap-in.
- Start the Collaboration Services management console and create a new backup of configuration data. To do this, right-click Collaboration Services root node and select Properties. In the Properties dialog, click the Backup and Restore tab and click theBackup Now button.
- Republish all the collections from all the sides involved (HQ and all branches). To decrease load on HQ server republish collections separately one by one.To republish all collections simultaneously, pleaseright-click the Publication node and select Re-publish | Everything.