Now that I have enough things added that I would not want to have to start again - what is the consensus on backups?
Just the DB? and if so, is there a standard command to use - or a sequence of commands?
The closest I found was this
https://www.netxms.org/forum/installation/netxms-server-backup-and-restore-process/
So for my postgres on Windows, it would be
1) Backup netxmsd.conf / nxagentd.conf
2) Backup /netxms (keep everything - much easier)
3) Backup database (pg_dump)
4) Backup copy of DB and NetXMS install files (for bare metal restore)
Restore procedure is:
1) Restore or recreate config
2) Restore files, if any
3) Restore database
4) Check data consistency: "nxdbmgr check"
Bare Metal restore:
1) Build server
2) Install DB - same DB as old
3) Install NetXMS - same version as old
4) Restore config
5) Restore DB
6) Check data consistency: "nxdbmgr check"
All good!!
Is this what others are doing?
We are backing the entire VM up using Veeam, which worked quite well for us so far.
As we are running Hyper-V clusters, if the host fails the VM is moved across automatically, there is no real bare metal restore.
If needed, we could run up another host and restore the VM to that.
And yes, part of any restore is indeed to run a database consistency check.
We have Vsphere HA cluster and Commvault snapshot based backups.
https://www.veeam.com/blog/why-snapshots-alone-are-not-backups.html
Unfortunately, we do not have the Commvault PostgreSQL agent which means a DIY option.
I have pg_dump working producing compressed files in Directory format so happy enough with that. *** my daily safety net ***
My uncompressed version produced the same size backup as nxdbmgr export - so happy enough with that as well.
Having a just-in-case seems like a good idea and since I will be smash testing my VM (and host) to see how "recoverable" it is - I want to make sure I really can recover it - no matter what!!
I will start with a snapshot though after first stopping NetXMS and PG :) - my ultimate fall back.