For attachments and DB back up is there any order in which the backups needs to be taken to maintain
Asked by ELIZABETH_JOHN:

For confluence backups, suggestion is to take confluence.cfg.xml, attachments folder and DB back up at the minimum. My understanding is that "confluence.cfg.xml" needs to be taken just once and need not be taken daily. For attachments and DB back up is there any order in which the backups needs to be taken to maintain integrity of data. For daily backups, which one should be taken first - DB back up and attachments?

In the attachments folder the data is present in the following format and it should have some reference in DB, but "attachmentdata" table in DB is empty.

2632 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/202/244/17994202/17994205  
2636 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/202/244/17994202  
2640 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/202/244  
2644 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/202  
84 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/14/12264271/12264274  
160 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/14/12264271/12264273  
248 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/14/12264271  
252 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/14  
5496 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/198/4948021/7372947  
28616 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/198/4948021/4948023  
6948 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/198/4948021/7372812  
8 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/198/4948021/7372830  
5064 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/198/4948021/7372867  
46136 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/198/4948021  
46140 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21/198  
46396 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/21  
788 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/62/198/4948062/4948234  
24 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/62/198/4948062/7372804  
160 ./ver003/237/230/4980737/62/198/4948062/4948102


Answers:
author: Moses Thomas
body: [@ELIZABETH_JOHN](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3936240) Which mechanism are you using for Back up ?

comments: author: ELIZABETH_JOHN
body: We are taking a DB back up using sql dump and taking a back up of attachments folder. We are not using the XML back up from confluence


author: Moses Thomas
body: [@ELIZABETH_JOHN](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3936240)

So perfect, sql_dump will preserve all data integrity you don't the to worry about any thing, and there are two important folders you also need to take back up.

You also need a mechanism that will make a copy these folders to some separate storage as back up, the copy mechanism for instance in Linux is "cp" command will do the copy in its own order and will preserve data integrity. You don't need to worry about **confluence.cfg.xml** it is just few megabytes
> **\<confluence_home\> //attachment are stored here**   
> **\<confluence_installation_folder\>**

You can decide to keep these folders for some time and delete them when new ones will be created(copied) you can have a simple script to do as a job via crontab not to occupy space.

In my case i use veeam backup and i make whole backup of the DB host and Confluence host.

Kind regards,

Mo


author: Karthik Ramachandran
body: Referring to original query, is there a reason why table "attachmentdata" in db is empty? Ideally any attachments if stored in filesystem may have a metadata reference in db table. Not sure if the table referenced is correct (or) there is a different design confluence follows. Based on that if DB backup is taken earlier than attachments folder, attachments folder may have extra file. The opposite would be like DB has reference but not the actual file system causing missing content.


author: Moses Thomas
body: [@ELIZABETH_JOHN](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3936240) [@Karthik Ramachandran](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3789039) Let me further explain, of-course the metadata table will be empty why ? first of all what is a metadata ? means the data that provide a structured description about some other data. From a programmer's point of view, database metadata refers to data about database data or, more elaborately, the information about tables, views, column types, column names, result sets, stored procedures, and databases.

Confluence does not store attachments on the database, so metadata is simply empty.

earlier versions allow us to store attachment in the database but for the latest version you cannot. You can read more here [Attachment Storage Configuration](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/attachment-storage-configuration-166876.html)

If you want to know more about the algorithm behind attachment storage see here

[Hierarchical File System Attachment Storage](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/hierarchical-file-system-attachment-storage-704578486.html)

Kind regards,

Moses


Tags: backup

confluence-server

server