What exactly is backed-up when backing up NPrinting?

[mwallman]

Hi,

What exactly is backed-up when backing up NPrinting?

I have read the backup guide: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/nprinting/April2019/Content/NPrinting/DeployingQVNprinting/Backing-up-Ql...

But I would like to know what is inside the .zip file once the backup is complete.

This information would be useful so we can know how much space is required to store the backup.

Any tips on any folders or files that will be particularly large in the backup would be good to know.

We largely use NewsStand and Email delivery mechanisms of NPrinting.

[Frank_S]

Check this article @mwallman 

https://community.qlik.com/t5/Knowledge-Base/How-to-BackUp-and-Restore-Qlik-NPrinting-Repository-Dat...

Hopefully this fills in the gaps.

Kind regards...

[mwallman]

Hi @Frank_S , thanks a useful article!

But I suppose I still don't understand what can form the bulk of the .zip file that is created.

What are the biggest items in the backup size wise?

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

The biggest items can be News Stand reports if there are configured to store history or big report templates... rest should be fairly small

[mwallman]

Hi @Lech_Miszkiewicz 

Is this the "Days to keep" and "Reports to keep" values of a Publish task? Is that were the store history is kept?

Also I noticed in the .zip file there is:

• File folder - What is stored in this folder?
• "nprintingback_datetime" file - Is this the repository database?

[Frank_S]

All report templates, connections, apps, newsstand, on demand reports are stored there as well as necessary information about restoring the NP database on Postgres. The apps folder is responsible for most space used in the NP_backup.zip

The files that are backed up are from the c:\programdata\nprinting\apps folder.

In fact when you restore the database you can actually clear out the apps folder and perform a restore. This will restore the contents of the apps folder.

See the following article for details.

https://community.qlik.com/t5/Knowledge-Base/How-to-clean-up-Orphaned-NPrinting-database-file-folder...

Kind regards...

[mwallman]

Hi @Frank_S ,

This is great thank you!

Is there a way to estimate what the size of the backup could be?

E.g. maybe by measuring the size of the repository db, templates and so on by measuring the 'live' folders of the entities?

The reason I ask is we want to backup NPrinting, but don't know how big the backup could be so would like to try and get an reasonably good estimate if possible. We can then use this to create an appropriate storage location for the backup.

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi @mwallman 

I understand that if you want to do this on PROD server you may have some reservations and want to learn everything before you do it and I agree this is the right approach.

On the other hand for the puprose of backup estimation there is no beter option as to run one manually using either cmd or use files @Daniel_Jenkins wrote some time ago which I use in each of my projects: https://community.qlik.com/t5/Qlik-NPrinting-Documents/Qlik-NPrinting-17-x-Repository-Backup-Batch-F.... This Batch file stops all services, takes backup and starts services again. For it to work fully automated you need to supply password as parameter (it is shown in the topic comments when you go to link above).

If you can find a window of time when you can simply try and run this on your environment (at the time when no reports are running and downtime will not affect users too much) - this may the quickest way to answer all your questions. 

Running backup command takes up 1 minute, creates zip file which you can then inspect as much as you need for the purpose of estimating size and learning about its content.

Last note - check your c drive size and already taken up space... If you have only 10 or 20 % of free space on NPrinting c drive it is likely that your backup will not fit on it. In such case you may need to modify Daniels batch to create backup on some other drive or add more space to C drive.

just a suggestion....

[mwallman]

Hi @Lech_Miszkiewicz , @Frank_S 

This is our PROD server which is heavily used.

We have reasons to believe this backup could take a long time because the NPrinting folder in the ProgramData C drive is about 170GB.

However we do not know how much of that NPrinting ProgramData folder is actually a representation of the contents of the backup NPrinting does.

So this is about size and time required for the backup.

This is why I am seeking any ways in providing a reasonably accurate estimate if possible. I am not looking for exact kb level of estimate, just a reasonably good way of measuring how big it might be. It helps in providing good service to our users and to those who have to do backups.

[Ruggero_Piccoli · Accepted solution]

[Edited]

Hi,

The backup file contains:

• a dump of the repository
• all files used by report templates
• all files related to reports published on the NewsStand. It can be a huge number. For example if you have 10 users, each with 20 reports and reports to keep set to 30 you will have 10x20x30=6000 files. The size of each file depends on its content. On recent versions the maximum size of a single report is 512Mb.
• reports generated via On-Demand
• if uploaded, there is also the custom NewsStand logo

Reports delivered via email or sent to folders are not stored in the backup file.

The backup file is a .zip so you can unzip it and check the content. In it files have id and no extensions.

If you have a huge Qlik NPrinting installation folder:

• note that every time you upgrade your Qlik NPrinting the installer creates a backup before and one after upgrading and they are not deleted automatically. This is very useful because it lets to recover some installations were there was not an official backup but we could use the automatic backup created at the upgrading time. They are in the folder C:\ProgramData\NPrinting so I suggest to check it and evaluate to keep only latest one
• if you reduce the values of Reports to keep and Days to keep please note that you have to wait that the cleaning job is ran before seeing the effects of published reports deletion. I suggest you to wait 24 hours.
• you can ask users to delete old copies of published reports by using the related NewsStand feature

I hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Ruggero