Creating Backup of FAB Archive Server

To be able to recover quickly from a hardware failure or accidental deletion of FAB Archive Server data it is necessary to create a backup at least once per day.

Generally it is very easy to install Windows and also installation of FAB Archive Server Software is very easy. Therefore in case of server failure the recommended way is to reinstall Windows and FAB Network Controller software on a new empty disk. After that:

  • Stop the Windows Service “FAB Archive Server”
  • Restore the complete NCArchive folder from the backup
  • Check that all subfolders were restored correctly: Current, Requests, History, History2
  • Run Archive Config to check that all configuration settings have been restored correctly
  • Start the Windows Service “FAB Archive Server”

Using ROBOCOPY to create a daily backup

An easy way to copy the complete NC folder to a backup server on the network is to use the ROBOCOPY program which is included in Windows. FAB Archive Server stores data in the folder NCArchive. The following subfolders are generally present in this folder, however they may have different names because these names and locations are configurable in Archive Config:

  • Requests: This subfolder contains all unprocessed requests with teletext page updates which are received from FAB Network Controller

  • Current: This subfolder contains the most recent teletext pages. Depending on the settings the content of this folder is moved to a new subfolder of the “History” subfolder when 100.000 teletext pages are stored in the folder or after 3 days (these values are configurable in Archive Config).

  • History: This subfolder contains many subfolders. Each contains teletext pages from the “Current” subfolder and it was created as described above.

  • History2: This subfolder is optional and may not exist if it is not configured in Archive Config. The folder contains subfolders with teletext pages which were moved from the subfolder History after the number of weeks defined in Archive Config.

You should never backup the subfolder “Requests” because this could cause a runtime error in FAB Archive Server.

Backing up the subfolder “Current” is optional. If you wish to create a backup of the subfolder “Current” then you will first have to put the archive server into backup mode by running a command line program “arcmd.exe” with the parameter “backup start”. When the backup has been finished the command line program “arcmd.exe” must be started again with the parameter “backup stop”.

The subfolders “History” and “History2” shall not be backed up during nightly processing tasks of FAB Archive Server. Therefore please run the backup either at least one hour before the nightly processing starts or two hours after the nightly processing. You can see and modify the time when the nightly processing starts in Archive Config.

The following command line can be used to start ROBOCOPY to copy the NCArchive folder to a network location. Note that the folder “Requests” is excluded from the copy process. If you exclude the folder “Current” then it is not necessary to run the program arcmd.exe:

To stop processing the “Current” folder (if Current is included in the backup):

"C:\Program Files (x86)\FAB Archive Server\arcmd.exe" -server:127.0.0.1 backup start

To copy the NCArchive folder:

robocopy D:\NCArchive \\BACKUPSERVER\BACKUPSHARE\NCArchive /S /E /MIR /A-:SH /W:0 /R:0 /NP /XD D:\NCArchive\Requests

To start processing the “Current” folder again (if Current is included in the backup):

"C:\Program Files (x86)\FAB Archive Server\arcmd.exe" -server:127.0.0.1 backup stop

You can create a batch file (backup-ncarchive.bat) with above content and start it every night using Windows Scheduled Tasks so that the backup will be created every night.

This page was last updated on 2021-04-11