Do you make regular GoldMine Backups?

A guide to SQL2005 Backup for GoldMine Premium edition

Both GoldMine Premium and GoldMine Corporate editions keep their data in a SQL Database. You need to be quite sure that this data is backed up correctly, something that a surprising number of people fail to do. You would be amazed how many Goldmine users who (especially those who upgraded from a GoldMine standard installation) think that just backing up the entire GoldMine folder is all that is needed.

1. It's not, but the good news is that it is surprisingly easy to create a robust automatic backup by following my beginners guide to SQL2005 backups.
2. Let's assume that you have an existing backup program already backing up the SERVER folder into which GoldMine is installed. This will be the folder that contains the GoldMine 'license.bin' file, you need to be backing up all the sub folders as well. If you have linked documents stored outside this folder then you need to be backing up these as well.
3. Create a directory within the Goldmine root folder called SQLBackups. This is the directory into which we are going to create our SQL backup files.
4. Open SQL 2005 Server Management Studio and check the SQL Agent is running. If not use the SQL Server Configuration Manager to check the service is set to Automatic, be sure to start it. (note: If these tools are not installed on your server, they can be found on the SQL disks that came with your copy of GoldMine Premium/Corporate).
5. Back in Management Studio, expand the Server folders in the left column and expand the Management Folder. Right click on the Maintenance Plans folder and select 'Maintenance Plan Wizard'.
6. Click 'Next' and give your maintenance plan a name. Click 'Change' to reach the schedule page and fill in a suitable schedule. Click 'OK' when you are happy with it.
7. Click 'Next' to reach the Maintenance Tasks pane.
8. Select the tasks you want. The only one you must tick is 'Backup Database (Full)'. Right now thats the only one we will tick. Now click 'Next'.
9. Click 'Next' again. From the Databases drop down list select 'All User Databases'.
10. Click 'Create a backup file for every database'.
11. click the [...] box and navigate to the folder we created to accept our backup files in step 2.
12. Tick 'Verify backup integrity' and click 'Next'.
13. If you want email reports sent to you, enter your email address and press 'Next' then 'Finish'.
14. After a few moments you should see that your plan was created without error. Click 'Close'.
15. You have now created your first Backup plan. I suggest you right click on it and choose 'Execute' The execute plan box opens while your backup is created. When it finishes click 'Close'
16. Check in your backup folder, are the  all there? If your Backup schedule was to occur overnight, then the following morning check that the backups completed successfully.

Note: there are many variations and maintenance plans that you can be setup. This is about as simple as I can make it. Once you have learned to make backups I suggest you practice doing a restore. Restore the backup to an alternative database and connect GoldMine to it.

Its no good making backups if you dont know how to restore them.

I will describe how to do this in a future post.