David:
You raise a very interesting point; clients sometimes want to use
whatever software they have to interface with your software. I have the
same problem, especially with printers. All of our reports inject PCL
(and PJL) into the print file to manage formatting. This means our
output has two attributes not normally encountered; it needs to print
directly to the printer and it can only use a PCL enabled printer.
As an aside, a couple of days ago one of our clients purchased an
expensive Sharp copier and when they tried to print a report it didn't
print at all. It turned out the copier has a security module within it
that popped open a security dialog to log the copies printed, but only
worked if the print job went through the print driver. I had to inform
them that wasn't a problem we could resolve as the entire process fails
with direct printing. Thus, they had to turn off the security in order
to use our printing.
The same holds true of backup and anti-virus software; we don't support
that software at all. They can't run anti-virus in the U2 data or
software directories at all. They also can't use any backup software
they want, especially because a number of them contain anti-virus
capabilities within its functionality. So, to resolve this problem
we've written a couple of Windows scripts that use Windows backup and
creates a single Windows file for the U2 database. They can then use
any backup software they want to backup this file.
Another issue to keep in mind, Windows significantly changed the backup
process between Windows 2003, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2!
"ntbackup" has been deprecated and replaced with "wbadmin" (in fact, in
Windows 2008 R2 "ntbackup" isn't even loaded with the system). It's a
completely different animal and not as flexible because, of course, they
partially implemented something "ntbackup" didn't have (image backups),
so they broke "wbadmin" and now we all have to do a different dance to
get backups to work. :-(
So, I guess I can say I do feel your pain! :-)
Bill
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
*From:* [email protected]
*To:* 'U2 Users List' <[email protected]>
*Date:* 8/9/2012 8:14 AM
*Subject:* Re: [U2] dbpause/dbresume or stopud/startud
It's dependent on the software in use -- we have customers who want to use
what they've always used as backup software, and many of the products they
have been using will not back up 'open' files. So they end up skipping our
primary datafile files!! Yikes!!
I'm sure things will improve as the Windows Server versions keep marching
forward -- just one of those things -- We have 'what we have seen work' and
just suggest that when it happens.
Many customers just do a 'stopud' at night to pull backups -- then startud
when done -- all part of their backup script. Just too bad the dbpause does
not have an option to 'release open files' .
I think the problem is the backup software sees any 'open file' as a
potential 'in motion' and does not bother with it since there is no way it
can be 'consistent'. 'dbpause' handles this 'logically' but Windows still
sees and reports the file as 'open'.
Again, not a huge deal - just always keeping the ear to the ground if it
gets 'better'.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bill Haskett
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 10:06 AM
To: U2 Users List
Subject: Re: [U2] dbpause/dbresume or stopud/startud
David:
I'm sure I don't have a complete understanding of your situation. I use
"dbpause" all the time and run backups using Windows backup utilities.
I don't think they have a problem backing up locked files because of the
volume Shadow Copy functionality built into Windows (of course the service
needs to be running).
Our backups have been running on a number of machines over the last seven or
eight years. Am I missing something?
Bill
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
*From:* [email protected]
*To:* 'U2 Users List' <[email protected]>
*Date:* 8/9/2012 6:35 AM
*Subject:* Re: [U2] dbpause/dbresume or stopud/startud
Has the issue on Windows been resolved? Our customers reported that
UniData maintained 'open files' at a dbpause, which still made the
backup difficult with a dbpause.
[snipped]
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