Proclaim Backup and recovery

Are you still blindly using the Access/Eclipse supplied nightly backup routine (as 99% of firms we see are)?

In the event of a disaster,there’s no excuse if you can’t recover your systems to within moments of the outage (RPO), and within minutes of the outage (RTO).

Most firms we work with all start the same way with their approach to Proclaim backups: the database is seen as some ‘dark art’ that is best left to the default overnight backup script that Access/Eclipse installed many moons ago.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

               “How much data will be lost?” What point in time do you have to revert your system in order to restore Proclaim?

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

               “How long does it take to recover?” Your firm is taking damage until your systems return to ‘business as usual’?

How much does 24 hours’ of lost work cost you?

• Repeating the data input
• Re-sending letters, emails.
• Double-checking submissions to e.g. CCBC, SDLT.
• Missed litigation deadlines
• Reputational damage
• Client compensation

Have you ever tried restoring your backup? What if a user maliciously changes data days or weeks ago – can you revert the change?

The gold standard would be Progress Replication, allowing seamless failover in the event of DB outage, but your licensing costs effectively double, and the configuration and maintenance burdens are significant.

Thankfully, Proclaim can be configured for 5 minute RPO and 5 minute RTO with minimal licencing costs (no user-count costs). Combined with thorough playbooks, testing and scenario rehearsal, warm standby replication is something every firm can embrace.

Contact us if you would like to explore Proclaim backup, restore, business continuity and disaster recovery options that suit your business and infrastructure.

How to backup Proclaim database?

In its simplest form:

1. Backup using the Progress PROBKUP command with ONLINE switch.
   • There’s no need to shut your database down – and there are performance gains be had keeping your DB runnning 24/7
   • This is the manufacturer approved method. Don’t rely solely on VM or storage snapshots for Progress databases.
   • Optimisations for compression, private buffers, and multithreaded backup (OE12.8+) are available.
2. Enable After Imaging
   • A no-brainer in the modern age: protects from data loss in between nightly full backups, allows for warm standby replication
3. Move your backup and archived AI files to offsite storage as soon as they are created.
   • Considered choice of location and archiving ensures minimal recovery time. We can assist with creating scripts and monitors.
4. Test restore and verification as part of your backup scripting.
   • automated alerting as a minimum on backup process failures

The exact implementation depends on your infrastructure and desired DR plan. There are many optimisations within this configuration to ensure timely recovery: where your backups are stored, what redundant storage you need on your restoration target, how to store, archive and replay your AI log files.

Consider also: what files constitute a full proclaim backup? licences, DB configuration, client configs, conmgr/ubroker properties, recent structure listing.

Contact Us if you would like assistance optimising your Proclaim backup and disaster recovery scripts.

How to restore Proclaim database from backup?

1. Do not overwrite your current database: create a new directory to restore to. Preserve your damaged database (if available) for later reovery attempts.
2. Copy your database structure file into the restoration target folder, and amend paths as needed in the .st file to point to your new storage location.
3. in a PROENV64 window, change directory to the new DB folder
4. Create a new void database using e.g. PROSTRCT CREATE proclaim proclaim.st
5. Restore data using e.g. PROREST proclaim proclaim.bck
   • The DB will be restored into areas on disk as defined in the structure file.
6. Replay archived AI extents to bring your database up to the point of failure using e.g. RFUTIL proclaim -C roll forward -ailist [list of AI files to apply]
   • Consider rolling forward to a consistent point in time. We can assist in scripting this for automatic DB synchronisation.
7. Repeat for all affected databases.
8. Consider restoring or amending your progress.cfg, conmgr/ubroker properties etc files too, for automatic startup and administration under OEE (if used)

Proclaim specific considerations

Proclaim relies heavily on the interplay of several databases – proclaim/proacc/gdpr/dyndb/legacy/misdb/touchpoint. You need to be able to restore each database to the same point in time to avoid locically ‘fractured’ matters, especially between Proclaim and Accounts tables.

If you restore to a prior point in time, you will need to consider how best to handle discrepancies in your document archive too: This can be handled in a straightforward manner to prevent losing work or scanned in post.

Contact us to discuss ways this can be achieved. We have set up dozens of DR solutions for Proclaim, tailored to individual firm’s needs.