Backing Up Your System

Backing up data and programs is a necessary function for any system administrator. Lawson does not provide backup routines because of the many platform-specific options available. You can use the same utilities that you use for other systems to back up and retrieve Lawson programs and data on your server.

The recommendations in this chapter do not replace your organization's backup and recovery policies and procedures. Lawson offers these recommendations to assist you in fitting Lawson into your existing plans.

Consider the following schedule:

• Back up data and the data dictionary at least once a day.

• Back up the entire machine at least once a week (more often, if possible).

• Back up programs when they change.

Back up your data and programs using three separate backups:

• Application data

• Application programs

• System data

Make sure that your backup includes all three main directories in the IFS - such as those for $GENDIR, $LADBDIR, and $LAWDIR - plus your business data stored in the relational database. Also be sure to back up the Lawson libraries, such as those with the Environment and applications programs and source code.

Backing up only a portion of the files results in an incomplete backup and causes problems if you need to restore.