Do You Need to Make an Immediate or Occasional One Time Backup of Your Dynamics GP Databases?
Occasionally you may be performing some month-end closing procedures, or you are about to post a large significant batch, or maybe you are about to integrate a large amount of data into your Dynamics GP databases; it is critical that you make sure you have a good set of database backups to recover from if the procedure fails in some way.
For example; if you already have a nightly set of Database backups, you can rely on these to restore from if you are satisfied with restoring from last night’s backup. But if you are ready to run a procedure in the middle of the afternoon and want to be able to recover your data should something go wrong, you will likely want to recover your data to the point just before you ran the procedure. If this is the case, you should make a separate one-time backup of your data at this point before running your procedure.
There are a few methods you can use to create a one-time set of backups – either of all databases or perhaps an individual company database only:
- Use the Dynamics GP Interface to backup a single database
- Use the SQL Server Management Studio to backup a single database
- Use the SQL Server Management Studio to backup all databases
Please note that with any of these methods, you will want to first verify you have sufficient hard drive space available in the location you are saving the backups to.
1. Use The Dynamics GP Interface to Backup a Single Database
Note: Only a system administrator can open the Back Up Company window to make backups. The Back Up Company window is only available when using a Microsoft Dynamics GP installation on the SQL Server.
Log onto or remote onto the SQL Server desktop; Launch the Dynamics GP client right on the server machine itself; Log in using the SA credentials to any company
Choose Microsoft Dynamics GP >> Maintenance >> Backup
Select the Company database you wish to back up, the path where you want the backup saved (this will be a drive location on the SQL server) and the name of the file. It should already default in a proper name and date for this specific db backup – but you can type in something more specific if you prefer (i.e. DBNAME_Backup_Pre_MonthEndReset.bak)
Then click ‘OK’
You should see a message indicating that the backup is now taking place …
When the backup is completed you should see a final message. Click OK.
You can verify the backup file exists by navigating out to the hard drive/path where you saved it.
2. Use SQL Server Management Studio to Backup a Single Database
If you have appropriate network permissions, connect to your back office SQL Server desktop and launch SQL Server Management Studio, make sure you are connected as the SA account to the correct SQL Installed instance for your Dynamics GP environment (you may have more than one SQL instance installed depending on your environment and company needs). You will know you are connected correctly as you will see your list of GP Databases in the Databases tree on the left
Right click on an individual DB you wish to make a one-time backup for and choose Tasks >> Backup
You can choose to Remove the backup name and file path that is already listed there (or keep it) and then choose to Add your own file backup name and path as shown in this example (make sure to name the file appropriately and include a date/time value as shown here). It’s very important to ensure the file extension is listed as .bak as shown in this example:
Click OK to begin the backup
You should see the backup proceeding
You can verify the backup file exists by navigating out to the hard drive/path where you saved it.
3. Use SQL Server Management Studio To Backup All Databases
If you have appropriate network permissions, connect to your back office SQL Server and launch SQL Server Management Studio, make sure you are connected as the SA account to the correct SQL Installed instance for your Dynamics GP environment (you may have more than one SQL instance installed depending on your environment and company needs). You will know you are connected correctly as you will see your list of GP Databases in the Expanded Databases tree on the left.
There should be SQL Maintenance Plans already set up to do nightly or regular Dynamics GP Database Backups. See Management >> Maintenance Plans (see example list of Maintenance Plans in this screen shot).
If they are already created and enabled for backing up All Dynamics databases, then you can execute the SQL Job manually as required. You can click on SQL Agent >> Jobs in the Navigation Tree on the left of the SQL Server Management Studio interface – it should display the list of available jobs on the right
You can then Right Click on the SQL Backup Job and choose Start Job At Step…
The Job should begin to run and you will see a progress window
When the Job is complete you will see a message, you can click Close to close this window.
The post Procedures to Make One Time Backups of GP Databases appeared first on Encore Blog, by Encore Business Solutions
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