idea Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager) in Suggest an Idea

Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager)

Ricardo_Gerhard — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 12:30:59 GMT

Woooww, a great feature and resource that was removed in the last versions!

Currently, we need to do a few steps in order to backup a simple environment.(certificates, files, etc)

Qlik Sense 3 had a Repository Snapshot Manager that was very helpful.

Please, rebuild this resource ASAP.

Also, this resource could be invoked from QSR and defined its destination and path from QMC

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager)

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 07:04:37 GMT

For me "Automated Backup Tool" is a must have for all Customers that need 24/7, as the users are located around the world. How does Qlik achive this in Qlik Cloud? You hopefully don't stop all Qlik services to have a backup 😉

It is a big issue to us, that we have to shut down services to allow a backup of the system, as we always have users online.

What we need:

- Online Backup (No shutdown of Services necessary)

- Backup only Layout and Scripts (we backup 90 GB of data that is stored in".qvf" - even this is not really necessary as we have all Data in our DWH/.qvd Layer as well)

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager)

Levi_Turner — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 22:04:46 GMT

So this is already in the product, see https://qliksupport.force.com/articles/000051894

Is there a use case above and beyond this?

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager)

Ricardo_Gerhard — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 20:30:33 GMT

Thank you Levi. It´s exactly what we were looking for.

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager)

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 07:19:22 GMT

Hi Levi!

Thanks for the finding!

Can you please confirm that this tool is supported by Qlik? Currently it is not mentioned in the Qlik Sense June 2018 help file: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense/June2018/Subsystems/PlanningQlikSenseDeployments/Content/Deployment/Backing-up-a-site.htm

We made some bad experiences with the previous Qlik Sense RSM backup tool, therefore we want to ensure that this product will last longer, before we use it in customer enviornments.

Unfortunately also this tool does not solve our general issue on Qlik Sense Backup: Again this tool has to stop all services, so Qlik Sense Hub is offline during backup.

Are you aware of any plans to provide an online backup? Or customers want to have a "follow the sun 24/(7)" Self-Service platform; so we can not shut down the environment just for backup.

The current alternative is to do backups only on weekends, but what happens if the server crashes on Thursday and we don't have a backup of all self service objects created since last sunday?

Other issues:

- How to stop all services in a Qlik Sense Cluster environment?

- Backup takes longer the more data you have, which causes the Hub to be offline during the whole backup period as well. --> an option to only backup metadata (scripts and layouts) would be great, as this would minimize downtime.

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager)

Levi_Turner — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 10:36:25 GMT

> Can you please confirm that this tool is supported by Qlik? Currently it is not mentioned in the Qlik Sense June 2018 help file: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense/June2018/Subsystems/PlanningQlikSenseDeployments/Content/Deployment/Backing-up-a-site.htm

Yes, it is supported.

> Are you aware of any plans to provide an online backup? Or customers want to have a "follow the sun 24/(7)" Self-Service platform; so we can not shut down the environment just for backup.

There is nothing in the product to achieve this functionality. The difficulty for such an implementation is that there isn't a mechanism inside of Qlik Sense to ensure nothing is changing from an app perspective. If content creation is turned off (i.e. users cannot create apps, sheets, stories, bookmarks, etc) and apps aren't reloading, then a live backup is perfectly fine. PostgreSQL will queue any transactions while doing a pg_dump then robocopy / etc the Apps and StaticContent directories.

Honestly I wouldn't use the RSM or QlikSenseUtil in a large environment to begin with, because it's an overly powerful tool. The key elements for me would be:

Certs
- You only need these once, but exports of certs is a quick process
Backup of the database
- Quick and can be done live
Apps + StaticContent
- Approach 1: Have them live on a resilient storage device; if a business' SAN goes down, then they have larger problems than just their BI Tool
- Approach 2: Snapshot them from a layer beneath the OS; depending on the efficiency of the snapshotting process.

Most orgs do not care so much about the logs, so a robocopy script can be built out to do a copy of the net new logs can be done should retention of logs be important.

As you mentioned, breaking up the meta-data layer of an app from the data layer would also allow much more in the way of flexibility so do ping your account / partner rep about that voicing a need for this functionality.

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager)

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 12:13:26 GMT

Hi Levi!

Qlik Sense Sept 2018 now provides the possiblilty via QMC to only export Application Metadata (Export .qvf without data).

Do you know if Qlik Sense Utility has an option to export all Applications without Data.

This would help us a lot to automize the following steps:

- Export all Apps without data

- Check them into SVN/GIT

Thx,

Roland

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager)

Levi_Turner — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 12:19:20 GMT

No, the Qlik Sense Utility cannot do that. It's use case is a whole site backup rather than aiding in a DevOps process. For exporting without data, you can do this via the QRS API. One approach is outlined here: https://github.com/ahaydon/Qlik-Cli/issues/59

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager) - Status changed to: Open - Collecting Feedback

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 20:11:16 GMT

Re: Automated Backup Tool (Repository Snapshot Manager) - Status changed to: Closed - Archived

Meghann_MacDonald — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 21:06:34 GMT

Thank you for contributing to this idea. Since it has been collecting feedback for more than a few years, we will archive the idea.