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User Guide for Caché

User Guide for Caché#

Overview#

This guide introduces how to install and configure the ADPS agent and how to properly use ADPS to back up and restore Caché.

The backup and restore features supported by ADPS include:

  • Backup sources

    Single or multiple databases

  • Backup types

    Full backup, incremental backup, and log backup

  • Backup targets

    Standard storage pool, deduplication storage pool, local storage pool, tape library pool, object storage service pool, and LAN-free pool

  • Backup schedules

    Immediate, one-time, hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly.

  • Data processing

    Data compression, data encryption, multiple channels, reconnection, speed limit, and replication

  • Restore types

    Point-in-time restore and recovery testing

  • Restore targets

    Original host and different host

Planning and preparation#

Before you install the agent, check the following prerequisites:

  1. You have already installed and configured other backup components, including the backup server and the storage server.

  2. You have created a user with roles of operator and administrator on the ADPS console. Log in to the console with this user to back up and restore the resource.

Note

The administrator role can install and configure agents, activate licenses, and authorize users. The operator role can create backup/restore jobs and conduct copy data management (CDM).

Install and configure the agent#

To back up and restore Caché, first install the ADPS agent on the host where Caché resides.

Verify the compatibility#

Before you install the agent, ensure that the environment of the host where Caché resides is on the Aurreum Data Protection Suite’s compatibility lists.

ADPS supports the backup and restore of Caché single instance and multiple instances.

Supported Caché versions include:

  • Caché 2010/2016/2017/2018

Install the agent#

The ADPS agent can be installed on Windows and Linux. You can select the installation method according to your environment.

Windows#

To install the agent, do the following:

  1. Log in to the ADPS console.

  2. From the menu, click Resource > Resource. The Resource page appears.

  3. From the toolbar, click the Install agent icon. The Install agent window appears.

  4. In the Install agent window, do the following:

    (1) From the Select system list, select Windows.

    (2) From the Select file list, select the package that you want to install.

    (3) Click Download.

  5. Upload the package to the Windows host.

  6. Log in to the Windows host as a user with administrative privileges. Double-click the package and open the installation wizard. Click Next.

  7. At the Select components step, select InterSystems Caché from the component list. Click Next.

  8. At the Configure Aurreum Data Protection Suite agent step, enter the following:

    (1) In the Backup server address field, enter the IP or domain name of the backup server.

    (2) In the Backup server port field, enter the port number. The default value is 50305. If you enable the Use SSL secure connection option, enter 60305 in the Backup server port field.

    (3) The Access key field is optional and blank by default. If your backup server adopts multi-tenancy, you must enter the access key of the tenant for the agent.

    (4) Click Next.

    Note

    To get the access key of the user/tenant:

    1. Log in to the ADPS console.

    2. On the upper right corner, click your avatar, and go to Personal settings > Account settings.

    3. On the Preference tab, click View to get the access key of the current user/tenant.

  9. Confirm the Destination folder or specify another folder. Click Next.

  10. Wait for the installation to complete.

Linux#

For Linux OS, ADPS agent supports online and offline installation. We recommend online installation.

  1. Online installation: ADPS provides curl and wget commands for installation.

  2. Offline installation: See Offline installation in Aurreum Data Protection Suite Agent Installation Guide.

To install the agent online, do the following:

  1. Log in to the ADPS console.

  2. From the menu, click Resource > Resource. The Resource page appears.

  3. From the toolbar, click the Install agent icon. The Install agent window appears.

  4. In the Install agent window, do the following:

    (1) From the Select system list, select Linux.

    (2) From the Component list, select InterSystems Caché. The curl and wget commands appear in the window.

    (3) If you want to delete the downloaded package automatically after the installation, select the Delete installation package checkbox.

    (4) If you enable Ignore SSL errors, the installation will ignore certificate errors and so on. If you disable the option, the installation will prompt you to enter Y/N to continue or discontinue the process when an error occurs.

  1. Click the Copy icon to copy the curl or wget command.

  2. Log in to the Linux host as user root. Paste the command in the terminal and press Enter to start the installation. Example:

curl "http://IP:80/d2/update/script?modules=cachedb&ignore_ssl_error=&access_key=5858ae1abb59f2c5f4ee5e2c4a36ffcf&rm=&tool=curl" | sh

  1. Wait for the installation to complete.

Activate licenses and authorize users#

After the agent installation, go back to the Resource page. The host with the agent installed appears on the page. Before you back up and restore Caché, register the host, activate the backup license, and authorize users.

To activate licenses and authorize users, do the following:

  1. From the menu, click Resource > Resource. The Resource page appears.

  2. On the Resource page, select the host where Caché resides. Click the Register icon. After the registration, the Activate window appears.

  3. In the Activate window, select the InterSystems Caché backup license, and click Submit. After the activation, the Authorize window appears.

    Note

    If you are prompted with “No enough licenses”, contact the administrator to add licenses.

  4. In the Authorize window, select user groups to authorize access to the resource. Click Submit.

Note

With many agents, install them first, then batch register, batch activate, and batch authorize the agents and resources for convenience. For details, see Batch register/Batch activate/Batch authorize in Aurreum Data Protection Suite Administrator’s Guide.

Backup#

Backup types#

ADPS provides three three backup types for Caché:

  • Full backup

    Backs up all databases except the CACHESYS database.

  • Incremental backup

    Backs up data changed since the last full or incremental backup. The first incremental backup will be executed as the full backup if no full backup is ever executed.

  • Log backup

    With the Global Journal State database option enabled, the journal files of Caché will be backed up.

    Note

    • Log backup requires the Global Journal State database option enabled.

    • Set reasonable values for the When to purge journal files database options.

Backup policies#

ADPS provides six backup schedule types: immediate, one-time, hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly.

  • Immediate: ADPS will immediately start the job after it is created.

  • One-time: ADPS will perform the job at the specified time once only.

  • Hourly: ADPS will perform the job periodically at the specified hour/minute intervals within the time range according to the setting.

  • Daily: ADPS will perform the job periodically at the specified time and day intervals.

  • Weekly: ADPS will perform the job periodically at the specified time and week intervals.

  • Monthly: ADPS will perform the job periodically at the specified dates and times.

You can set an appropriate backup policy based on your situation and requirements. Usually, we recommend the following common backup policy:

  1. Perform a full backup once a week when the application traffic is relatively small (Example: on the weekend) to ensure that you have a recoverable point in time every week.

  2. Perform an incremental backup every day when the application traffic is relatively small (Example: at 2 a.m.) to ensure that you have a recoverable point in time every day, which can save storage space and backup time.

  3. Perform a log backup hourly if the database supports log backups to achieve the precise point-in-time restore and ensure that the restore granularity can reach the second level.

Before you begin#

Before you back up and restore Caché, check the following:

  1. Check the Caché instance status.

  • Windows

    Log in to the host and open the service list. The Caché instance status should be “active”.

  • Linux

    Open the terminal on the host and use the ccontrol list command to check the Caché instance status.

[root@cache148 ~]# ccontrol list
Configuration 'CACHE2016'
    directory: /home/cache2016
    versionid: 2016.2.0.736.0
    conf file: cache.cpf  (SuperServer port = 1972, WebServer = 57772)
    status:    running, since Thu May 18 11:27:34 2023
    state:     ok

  1. Check storage pools.

    (1) From the menu, click Storage > Storage pool. The Storage pool page appears.

    (2) Check whether the display area has any storage pools. If no, create a storage pool and authorize it for the current user. For details, see Add a storage pool in Aurreum Data Protection Suite Administrator’s Guide.

Log in to the instance#

Before you create a backup or restore job, log in to the Caché instance on the console.

To log in to the resource, do the following:

  1. From the menu, click Resource > Resource. The Resource page appears.

  2. From the host list, find the host where Caché resides. If you have many hosts, use the search bar to find the host quickly. Click the host to expand its resource list.

  3. Click Login beside the resource. The Login window appears.

  1. In the Login window, enter the User and Password of the database user, click Login.

  2. If your information is correct, you will be prompted that you have logged in to the resource successfully.

Note

  • Use the user and password for the Caché Management Portal to log in to the Caché instance. The user’s properties(“Roles”) should be “%All”.

  • Select the Unicode database option during the Caché 2016 installation.

  • After Caché is installed, add the Caché installation directory to the environment variable path.

Create a backup job#

To create a backup job, do the following:

  1. From the menu, click Backup. The backup job wizard appears.

  2. At the Hosts and resources step, select the host where Caché resides and select the resource. The wizard goes to the next step automatically.

  3. At the Backup source step, do the following:

    (1) From the Backup type list, select a backup type.

    (2) In the Backup source section, select the databases that you want to back up.

  4. At the Backup target step, select a storage pool. Click Next.

Note

Incremental backups and log backups must have the same backup target as their baseline backups.

  1. At the Backup schedule step, set the job schedule. For details, see Backup policies. Click Next.

    • Select Immediate. ADPS performs the job immediately after it is created.

    • Select One time and set the start time for the job.

    • Select Hourly. Set the start time, end time, and time interval for job execution. The unit can be hour(s) or minute(s).

    • Select Daily. Set the start time and enter the time interval for job execution. The unit is day(s).

    • Select Weekly. Set the start time, enter the time interval, and select the specific dates in a week for job execution. The unit is week.

    • Select Monthly. Set the start time and months for job execution. You can select the natural dates in one month or select the specific dates in one week.

  2. At the Backup options step, set the common and advanced options according to your needs. For details, see Backup options. Click Next.

  3. At the Finish step, set the job name and confirm the job information. Click Submit.

  4. After the submission, you will be redirected to the Job page automatically. On this page, you can start, modify, and delete the job.

Backup options#

ADPS provides the following backup options for Caché:

  • Common options

Backup common options#

Option

Description

Limitations

Compression

Fast is enabled by default.
- None: No compression during the backup job.
- Tunable: Customizes the compression level. The Advanced Compression license is required.
- Fast: Uses the fast compression algorithms to compress data during the backup job.

  • Advanced options

Backup advanced options#

Option

Description

Limitations

Reconnection time

The value ranges from 1 to 60 minutes. The job continues after the abnormal reset occurs in the network within the set time.

Resumption buffer size

Specifies the resumption buffer size. The default value is 10 MiB. The bigger the resumption buffer size is, the more physical storage will be consumed. However, a bigger resumption buffer size can prevent data loss when the throughput of the business system is high.

Speed limit

Limits data transfer speed or disk read/write speed for different time periods. The unit can be KiB/s, MiB/s, and GiB/s.

Precondition

Checked before the job starts. The job execution will be aborted and the job state will be idle when the precondition is invalid.

Pre-/Post-script

The pre-script is executed after the job starts and before the resource is backed up. The post-script is executed after the resource is backed up.

Restore#

Restore types#

For different needs, ADPS provides several restore types for Caché, including:

  • Point-in-time restore

    When a disaster occurs in a Caché database, you can perform a point-in-time restore job to restore the database to a specified point-in-time state. You can restore to the original or a different host.

  • Recovery testing

    Restores the latest backup sets to another instance on the original host or a different host hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly.

Before you begin#

To restore Caché to a different host, install the agent on that host, activate the licenses, and authorize user access to the resource.

Create a point-in-time restore job#

To create a point-in-time restore job, do the following:

  1. From the menu, click Restore. The restore job wizard appears.

  2. At the Hosts and resources step, select the host where Caché resides and select the resource. The wizard goes to the next step automatically.

  3. At the Backup sets step, do the following:

    (1) From the Storage pool list, select a storage pool.

    (2) From the Restore type list, select Point-in-time restore.

    (3) From the Database list, select a database for the restore job.

    (4) In the Restore to point in time section, specify a point in time.

    (5) From the Backup sets list, select a backup set.

    (6) Click Next.

  4. At the Restore target step, select a restore target. The wizard automatically goes to the next step.

  5. At the Restore schedule step, set the job schedule. Click Next.

    • Select Immediate. ADPS will perform the job immediately after its creation.

    • Select One time and set the start time for the job.

  6. At the Restore options step, set the options according to your needs. See Restore options. Click Next.

  7. At the Finish step, set the job name and confirm the job information. Click Submit.

  8. After the submission, you will be redirected to the Job page. You can start, modify, and delete the job.

Create a recovery testing job#

To create a recovery testing job, do the following:

  1. From the menu, click Restore. The restore job wizard appears.

  2. At the Hosts and resources step, select the host where Caché resides and select the resource. The wizard goes to the next step automatically.

  3. At the Backup sets step, do the following:

    (1) From the Storage pool list, select a storage pool.

    (2) From the Restore type list, select Recovery testing.

    (3) In the Restore source section, select one or more databases for the restore job.

    (4) Click Next.

  4. At the Restore target step, select a restore target. The wizard automatically goes to the next step. The restore target supports other instances on the original or a different host.

  5. At the Restore schedule step, set the job schedule. Click Next.

    • Select Hourly. Set the start time, end time, and time interval to specify the time range for job execution. The unit can be hour(s) or minute(s).

    • Select Daily. Set the start time and enter the time interval for job execution. The unit is day(s).

    • Select Weekly. Set the start time, enter the time interval, and select the specific dates in a week for job execution. The unit is week.

    • Select Monthly. Set the start time and months for job execution. You can select the natural dates in one month or select the specific dates in one week.

  6. At the Restore options step, set the options according to your needs. See Restore options. Click Next.

  7. At the Finish step, set the job name and confirm the job information. Click Submit.

  8. After the submission, you will be redirected to the Job page. You can start, modify, and delete the job.

Restore options#

ADPS provides the following restore options for Caché:

  • Common options:

Restore common options#

Option

Description

Limitations

Restore database

Leave it blank to overwrite the original database or enter a name to create a new database.

Restore directory

Specifies the corresponding database directory

  • Advanced options:

Restore advanced options#

Option

Description

Limitations

Reconnection time

The value ranges from 1 to 60 minutes. The job continues after the abnormal reset occurs in the network within the set time.

Resumption buffer size

Specifies the resumption buffer size. The default value is 10 MiB. The bigger the resumption buffer size is, the more physical storage will be consumed. However, a bigger resumption buffer size can prevent data loss when the throughput of the business system is high.

Speed limit

Limits data transfer speed or disk read/write speed for different time periods. The unit can be KiB/s, MiB/s, and GiB/s.

Precondition

Checked before the job starts. The job execution will be aborted and the job state will be idle when the precondition is invalid.

Pre-/Post-script

The pre-script is executed after the job starts and before the resource is restored. The post-script is executed after the resource is restored.

Limitations#

Limitations#

Feature

Limitations

Backup

- Do not support the following types of databases: dismounted, read-only, and CACHESYS.
- Caché maintains only one backup list. All backup jobs will back up the databases on the list. The databases that you have selected as the Backup Source will be synchronized to the Caché backup list. If you already have backup jobs, be careful when selecting databases.

Restore

- The restore of the database using the interactive key activation is not supported. If you need to restore to the encrypted instance, it is recommended to set the unattended key activation or disable the encryption feature and then enable it after the restore job is completed.
- The Reconnection time feature is not supported.

Glossary#

Glossary#

Term

Description

fast compression

A compression method that uses fast compression algorithms to compress data during the backup job.

global journal

Record all DDL operations.
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