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The attached warning taken from Acumatica user documentation has me concerned. It says "... we do not recommend that you use snapshots to back up data." Is this unnecessarily cautious or valid? What do most people do? If you are sure all users are out of a Tenant, do you need to go into Maintenance Mode or will the snapshot be safe to use because all users are out. Again, what do most people do?
We got a quote for the Acumatica backup services, but it seems unnecessarily expensive. What can we expect from Acumatica in the event we need to restore to a prior point in time should we find a major problem in our data?
Thanks so much for providing this forum.
Brenda
Are you On-Prem? If so, I would recommend using SQL Server backups because they can be scheduled and have much more robust functionality. Snapshots are fine for manual back/restore scenarios, but are not an automated backup solution.
We're not On-Prem. So, given we should rely on snapshots, I have a couple more questions. I understand you can go into maintenance mode to ensure a "Safe" snapshot. You can schedule an update which puts you in maintenance mode. However, other users with Admin rights can still get into Acumatica while you are in maintenance mode. If you turn on maintenance mode, what happens to non-admin user sessions that might be in the middle of some process such as printing checks. Does Acumatica let the process finish and then force a logoff. How does the person doing the maintenance and creating the snapshot know when it is really safe to do the maintenance. Also, if admin users can hop in and do work anyway, is it really "Safe"?
Is the primary purpose of maintenance mode and "Safe" Snapshots to ensure that the backup/snapshot is not made in the middle of a process that updates the database? If that's the case, are you safe just confirming that no users are online (and will stay out for the duration of the making of the snapshot) in the tenant having the snapshot taken?
Thank you for your input.
Brenda
I agree with Carl. If you aren't on-prem, then backups/restores are one of the primary functions of your hosting provider. If they aren't doing a good job, then maybe find another hosting provider.
Carl has more experience here than me, but I think the corruption problem that could happen is caused during the Snapshot process. If a process is in the middle of updating multiple tables and the Snapshop process is running through and grabbing the data from each of those tables, it might grab the data from one table before the process updates it and another table after the process updates it.
I think Maintenance Mode only kicks out a non-Admin user after a screen refresh (not 100% sure on this) so I think it's still possible to have someone in the middle of a process still.
I know this is an old post but in case someone else searches this topic, snapshot can also cause a loss of data. Acumatica does not backup usr fields that have been added to the database when taking a snapshot. You will get the new field in the database when you publish your customizations, but no data will be populated when the snapshot is restored. Recently found this out while moving a client from PCS to SaaS and did not have access to database.