How to take Tridion CM data base back up

Question

I am planning to take content manager Tridion_CM database backup.

I am using SDL Tridion 2011 SP1 and my database is MS SQL.

Can some one point me the links to do it.

Answer 1

Best scenario is always to take an "offline" backup, which means:

1. shutdown all SDL Tridion services (also on other servers in case of an outscaled scenario)
2. shutdown IIS (or at least the CMS website)
3. backup the database following MS SQL Server documentation, use a full database backup

In case you are doing the backup as part of your standard maintenance and recovery plan, then you are probably looking towards an "online" backup. For that just ignore steps 1 and 2 and skip directly to step 3.

The restore of a full "offline" database backup would be done as follows:

1. shutdown all SDL Tridion services (also on other servers in case of an outscaled scenario)
2. shutdown IIS (or at least the CMS website)

3. follow MS SQL Server documentation to restore the entire database (complete overwrite)

   (if the backup came from another server you will have to drop the existing database user and set the correct right for the restored one, since even if the names are similar, their unique ID won't be. This is all described in MS SQL Server documentation somewhere).

   In case of an "online" backup, you have to add the following step:

4. set all the value of IS_ONLINE to 0 for all records in the QUEUE_CONSUMERS table to match the state of the stopped services (which were running while you created the "online" backup)