[p4] backups

[Fredric.Fredriksson@mydata.se]

perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com wrote on 01/23/2008 01:14:03:

> Hey everyone,
>
> What do you folks do for backing up your p4 repository.. mainly curious
> to see what other people do out there.
We checkpoint the depot and take a backup every night. The backup is our
"standard" backup system used for all servers. We use a product called
NetWorker.

But the most important part is not backup but restore. I actually try a
restore now and then, at least when I made some significant change to the
server hardware or software (wise from experience ;-).

We have had two server crashes the last 10 years and I have had p4 up and
running again within less than a day (but sometimes on temporary hardware).
But with time the depot grows and restore and fire up a new server will
take longer.

What we plan to do now is to mirror our server to a virtual server in our
virtual server farm. The cost for this is negligible (in terms of hardware
that is) and even if a virtual server probably is not ideal for a p4 server
we should be up and running within minutes if the server crashes and only
loose the last 15 minutes of submits or so.
We can then fix the "real" server the right way and do not have to resort
to quick patches.

As I said, this is a plan and frankly I do not yet know how to do this or
how difficult this will be. I do believe it is possible though.

/Fredric

>
> Hope to see some of you in London. ;)
>
>
>
> Cheers
>