Back up and restore overview

Purpose of Backup and Restore

The Messaging server backs up Messaging data over the customer LAN to an external ftp server. The data can be backed up at the same time as the server data, or independently. In the event of a system failure, the system uses the information stored on the external server to restore the system to an operational state. Messaging supports up to 20,000 mailboxes. Messaging data backup might easily reach 50 Gigabytes or more. Customers might be unable to support transfers of single files of this size. Hence, in Messaging, the system automatically divides large data backups into 500 MB files before transfer. Each file transfer might complete in about 5 minutes. Consequently, the network must support a minimum average transfer rate of 1.6 MB/sec. Messaging supports the following backup methods:

FTP
SFTP
SCP

The system administrator who is administering network backups using FTP, SCP, or SFTP must be aware of the possible file storage sizes and the limitations of the storage size on the customer data network.

A system administrator can mitigate the backup file size by:

Limiting the mailbox size of the user storage, so that users do not have more than 10 minutes of voice storage in their mailbox.
Limiting the number of days a message can remain in a mailbox before the system deletes the message. Currently, the system default is 45 days, that is, a message remains in the mailbox for 45 days before the system deletes the message. The system automatically deletes messages during the nightly audits after the message age equals the administered number of days.

Data that you can back up and restore

You can back up any combination of the following Messaging data types at any time manually, Backup Now, or according to a schedule automatically, Scheduled Backup. The data types are:

Translations
Announcements
Messaging names
Messaging greetings and messages

Note

The system does not include language packs in the backup. Hence, you must install language packs on each application server.

Translations

Translations comprise of the following data:

Detailed system data on shared memory, speech file system pointers
Alarm management information
A list of enabled features
A list of installed software
Messaging digital networking connectivity and communication information
Message headers, mailing lists, user profiles including automated attendant administration, and message-waiting indicator status
Telephony server integration parameters
Hard disk configuration

Besides scheduled backups, you can also perform backups whenever you make extensive changes to user profiles.

Announcements

Announcements are prompts and phrases that guide a user through the Messaging application. This data type does not require a backup unless the system has customized announcements that changed recently. If you do not use customized announcements, a backup of announcements exists on the Avaya support site. See https://support.avaya.com.

Messaging names

The Messaging names data type contains recorded user names. You must perform a backup of this data type after you record additional user names.

Voice messages

Voice messages are recorded messages that users have received and retained. This includes the primary voice greeting, multiple personal greetings, and automated attendant menus and messages.

FTP server availability

If the FTP server is unavailable at the time of the backup, the backup fails. You must ensure that the maintenance on the FTP server does not coincide with backup timings. A backup requires 30 minutes or more, depending on the size of your files and the network traffic.

About restoring backed-up system files

The system uses the Messaging information stored on a server during data backups to restore the system to an operational state. Use the View/Restore Data Web page to restore backed-up system files.

Restore backups when an alarm repair action directs you to do so.

Backup verification

You must verify the success of each backup you run. A backup can include a variety of data types, in addition to Messaging server data. The View Backup Log screen, available from the Server (Maintenance) Web page, displays all backed up files. You can open any file and view the data types that the file contains.

Note

Backups cannot be partially successful. A Messaging backup is successful only if the backup includes all the data that you selected to back up.

If you perform the operations of backup and restore on the storage server, the Sites Web page data or provisioning data that the storage server uses is not the same as used by the application servers. The difference in data results in unexpected behavior in the operations on the application server.

Hence, if you perform the operations of backup and restore on the storage server, you must restart the Messaging server. By restarting the Messaging server, the system forces the application server to refresh the Sites Web page data in the cache that the application server maintains.