Re: [otrs] Move data from live server to local version of OTRS

Hi Lev, I've added some comments below 2009/9/8 Lev Davidovich :

Thanks Rory (and Lars) - that is brilliant - it achieves the main objective (clearing out the live database while having an archive backed up)!

I have some questions:

1) My test machine is Windows and live is Apache - is that going to create any problems?

I'm a little confused, do you mean IIS and Apache or Windows and Linux. Either way there could be a problem here. When you perform the upgrade on the test machine you don't know if it will work the same on the live machine. If both machines have the same OS then you should set up the test machine using apache too. I know it could be a pain but if you have a different OS on the test machine I would recommend you rebuild it with the same OS if you can.

2) My live version of OTRS is 2.2.5 and my test version is 2.3.3. So I should install 2.2.5 on my test machine prior to importing the database dump?

Yes that would be best approach. It would be a good idea to to make sure that the database is the same version for both the live and test too. This probably wouldn't cause a big problem as your live version is quite recent but its best to do it so you can be prepared for any unwelcome surprises.

3) You said “There's always the alternative of getting new hardware to run the production server on :)”. What did you mean by this?

I meant you could buy a new server or maybe a new harddrive and move the database onto the new harddrive. Have you money to spend? :)

4) I like the idea of having more than one database in the archive. But what about, say, a ticket which was closed before a dump and then reopened after it, or the tickets which are still open when the moment arrives for the live database to be cleared out? How do we archive such tickets?

This is the tricky bit and I'm not quite sure what the best approach would be. You'll need to research what is possible with mysqldump. Maybe you can dump after a certain date only i.e. dump everything older than 1 month. I don't know if that is possible though. It would be a good idea to research the different backup methods for mysql. There is a lot of learning to be done here but it is the kind of thing that you can use with every mysql database you ever work with so it is valuable to do. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/backup.html For open tickets at the time of the archive .... you could use a generic agent to close all tickets 1 month or older (that would be very old if you're working in an IT department). Then you could dump everything in the database older than 1 month. For tickets that are reopened after the dump .... If the ticket was closed and the user send wants to open the ticket again it could be ok to open a new ticket, the original was closed after all. You could always put in a brief description of what happened in the previous ticket, add its ticket number too if you have it, and note that it had been backed up. I can't see any ideal solution here tho. I hope that helps, Rory

Many thanks again for your kind support.

Lev ________________________________ From: Rory To: User questions and discussions about OTRS. Sent: Monday, 7 September, 2009 16:05:30 Subject: Re: [otrs] Move data from live server to local version of OTRS

Hi Lev,

I would suggest that you rebuild the test machine to the same version as your production machine. Once done, dump the live database and then import it to the test DB and copy over your configuration. Once this is in place perform the upgrade procedure on the test machine taking note of any steps you needed to do that were out of the ordinary. It would be a good idea to isolate the machine on the network so that you don't send out test spam to your clients as Lars said. You could do that at the firewall or simply have a private network between your machine and the server.

Once you successfully complete the update process on your test box you have your upgrade path. You can now be confident that you can successfully upgrade your production server. Once you have upgrade the production server to the same level as the test server you are in a position to do some reliable backups, you could even swap the servers if needed.

For the DB backup, mysqldump is a very good tool but you will have trouble if you try to use it the way you've described. You would have to edit the dump file and delete all the data in the live database after each backup. I can see it being very laborious.

What you could do is this;

1. Create a second database on the test server i.e. otrs2 2. Dump the current live database to the otrs2 database. 3. Clear out the live database. 4. Perform future dumps to the first test database.

This way you will have a current backup of the production server and a historical backup of the database that you can connect to if you need to. When the performance of the production server is degraded again you could create a 3rd database on the test server and repeat the above steps with it. This would leave you with a current production backup and 2 historical backups.

Its not a nice way of doing things but it would do what you were looking for. There's always the alternative of getting new hardware to run the production server on :)

I hope that helps, Rory Clerkin

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2009/9/7 Lev Davidovich :

...

I see.

So there is no way to, say, dump the data, import the dump into the backup, delete the backed up data from the live system and then import only the new data into the backup a few months later?

________________________________ From: Lars Monsees To: User questions and discussions about OTRS. Sent: Monday, 7 September, 2009 14:49:26 Subject: Re: [otrs] Move data from live server to local version of OTRS

Hi Lev,

...

Why is it not a good idea to do a dump every few months? Is it because the whole process is very time consuming? Or are there too many risks attached?

depending on the size of your DB, it can be very time consuming.

...

Where can I find more information about replication?

http://www.google.de/search?q=mysql+replication

Lars

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