Backing up the SMART database

Although your SMART system is extremely robust, there is always the possibility of hardware failure, fire, theft, or employee malpractice which could cause loss or damage to your SMART database.

Your SMART database is full of vital business information. Losing it could severely affect your ability to service customers and collect outstanding payments.

Database backup is an essential business procedure.

SMART has a built in backup system which provides a basic level of protection with minimal effort and expense.

Backup considerations

Your backup must protect you from these events

Total failure or loss of your database server.
Failure of one or more backup systems.
Total loss of your office building (e.g. through fire).

As a simple rule of thumb, the more locations in which your data is backed up, the more protection you have from such events. This means having a copy of your data on one or more PCs (besides the server) in your office, and taking a copy off site (e.g. to a manager's home) at least once a week.

As part of your backup strategy you should have a PC which can be quickly configured as an emergency server, should your main server fail.

The SMART database

SMART stores your data in a Microsoft SQL Server database, which has many features to ensure the safety of your data.

As well as the main database SQL Server creates a transaction log, a record of changes to the database. This means you can take a database backup and re-apply the changes which have occurred since the backup to restore your database as it was close to the time of loss or failure.

Because the transaction log is much smaller than the main database, you can back it up very frequently, perhaps every 10 minutes. Then you can back the much larger database up once a day, usually when the system is being lightly used.

SQL Server has built-in backup routines which mean you can continue to use SMART while an automatic backup is in progress. (You might notice a slight reduction in speed.)

Do not attempt to back up your SMART database by copying the files, e.g. using Windows Explorer or the DOS prompt. Even when SMART users are not active the database may be carrying out housekeeping tasks and the database may change during your copy. If this occurs your copy of the database will be unusable.

Restoring a backup

Restoring a database from backup is fairly straight forward but this is not supported by SMART as a safety measure (the risk of data being accidentally overwritten in this situation is quite high). If you need to restore your database you should consult SMART support or a technician familiar with SQL Server, or have a technically competent person refer to the SQL Server help.

SMART automated backup

SMART backup takes a backup of your main database once a day, and a backup of your transaction log at whatever interval you specify (default 10 minutes). If possible, you should make these backups to two different computers.

You should then arrange for these backups to be transferred to a tape or CD and taken off site at least once a week to protect against loss of your building.

At least one copy of SMART must be running for backups to occur at the scheduled time. The backup does not impose any additional load on workstations but may slow the server down a little (especially when doing a database backup).

Backups which start successfully are recorded in the Operator Log (select \Maintenance \Operator Log from the Main Menu).

To configure and start the SMART backup, select \Maintenance \Smart Setup \Backups from the Main Menu. Backup configuration must be done on the Smart server so that locations are specified correctly. (However, backups can be initiated by any PC running Smart when a backup job is due.)

Press the Next button to see the window below.

Press the button to Select location. If possible, choose a location on another PC. However, in order for the backup to write to another PC that PC must have a user with the same name and password as the account running SQL Server on the server. You may need some assistance from a system administrator or Smart technician to configure the account.

If you can't connect to another PC, choose a location on the server and make arrangements to copy the backup to another PC on a regular basis. If you are backing up to the server, be sure to monitor disk space as the backup can grow to be larger than the database itself.

Choose a time for the backup when system load is likely to be light. If you run a 24-hour operation an appropriate time might be early morning.

Press the Next button to configure Transaction Log backup.

For assistance in selecting a location, see the previous section. If possible, make your Transaction Log backup on a different PC than the Database backup.

You should choose a short frequency (e.g. 10 minutes) unless you find this affects system performance.

After making changes to the backup settings, press the Backup Now button to test your settings. Details of any errors are written to the Operator Log (select \Maintenance \Operator Log from the Main Menu). The most likely error is that you are backing up to a PC which does not give the server appropriate user rights.

Keeping backup size small

Backup files are added to rather than over-written, for added security. If these files are allowed to grow too large you will run out of disk space, causing the PC to slow or stop.

Once a week you should copy the backup file to another location and delete it from the original location. You can configure a simple job using Windows Task Scheduler or a similar tool to do this for you.

After the backup is deleted, the next backup will take a complete copy of the database, while any subsequent backups will backup only changes since the first backup.