Backing Up a Database Immediately

Follow these steps to initiate a database backup:

1. Log into the Admin Interface as a user with the admin role.

2. Click Databases in the left tree menu. A list of databases appears.

3. Click your target database.

4. Click the Backup/Restore tab.

5. Enter the directory to which you want the database backed up in the Backup to directory field.

   Note:
   
   The backup directory path must exist on all hosts that serve any forests in the database. The directory that you specified can be an operating-system-mounted directory path, or it can be a path to an object storage service. See Disk Storage Considerations in Query Performance and Tuning. Additionally, if you are using Windows and are backing up to a remote Windows path, then you must set the registry settings and permissions as described in Windows Shared Disk Registry Settings and Permissions.

6. If you want to encrypt your backup, then enter an Encryption password.

7. If you have configured forests for local-disk failover, and you want to include replica forests in the backup, then set Include replica forests to true. To configure forests for local-disk failover, see Configuring Local-Disk Failover for a Forest in Scalability, Availability, and Failover.

8. To create an incremental backup, set Incremental backup to true. The default is a full backup (false).

9. To enable point-in-time recovery, set Archive journals to true then set a Journal archiving lag limit. The journal archiving lag limit is described in Backing Up Databases with Journal Archiving.

   Note:
   
   If journal archiving is enabled, then you cannot include auxiliary forests, as they should have their own separate backups.

10. Click OK. The Confirm backup page appears with all the forests selected for backup.
    
    If a directory creation error appears instead, then the directory is not writable. Either change the permissions on the existing directory or create a new directory with the proper permissions (readable and writable by the user running MarkLogic Server: UNIX: daemon by default; Windows: local System user) and click OK again.

11. Deselect any forests that you do not want to back up then click OK. The Database Status page appears.

    Warning:
    
    If you deselect any of the forests to back up, then you might not have a completely consistent view of the database to restore. Deselect forests only if you are sure that you understand the implications of what you are backing up. To guarantee the exact same view of the database, back up all of the forests associated with the database, including the Schemas and Security database forests.

12. Refresh the Database Status page to view the progress of the backup. The Backups table lists when the backup was started, provides an estimate of the amount of time left, and lists other status information about the backup operation.

When the backup is complete, then the entry in the backup table disappears.

If the status for any of the forests was something besides “completed,” then an error occurred during the backup operation. Check the Mark_Logic_Data/Logs/ErrorLog.txt file for any errors, correct them, and try the backup operation again.