How to schedule daily backups of SnowdropKCS Payroll

The most common practice is to set Windows scheduled tasks on the Payroll Database server to run the relevant backup each evening. The backup script can be run at any stage, regardless of whether the databases are running or not.

NOTE: These scripts only produce To-Disk backups of your LIVE system (To take backups of your TEST system you can run the AdHocBk.cmd script. Please note this has been configured to run as an interactive script rather than automated). Click here for information on How to take an Ad-Hoc backup of the SnowdropKCS Payroll system.

CAUTION: Whatever frequency you choose regarding payroll backups, it is a NECESSITY that you use the same frequency for backing up your HR SQL Database. This is because if you are required to restore your payroll database, as of a specific day, your LINKED HR system must also be restored to this day.

Setting up backups through Task Scheduler 

1. Click Start and in the search menu look for Task Scheduler.
2. On the right of the scheduler click on Create Task.
3. Give the task a name Daily Payroll Backup.
4. Under security options click the radio button for Run whether user is logged on or not.
5. Click on Triggers and then click New...
6. Set the Begin the Task to On a Schedule.
7. In the Settings select the radio button for Weekly, then change the start time to 23:00.
8. Enter 1 in the Recur every weeks on section then tick all your working days.
9. Click OK.
10. Click on the Actions tab and then click New...
11. Set the Action to Start a program.
12. In the Settings section, click browse and navigate to your Payrollv10 bin folder. By default this is C:\SnowdropKCS\Payrollv10\apps\bin. 
13. Select the backup_day.cmd and then click Open.
14. Click OK, then click OK on the task scheduler window.
15. You have now setup your system to take backups automatically.

Accessing your backups

The backup you have created will be created in the path found in your parameters.cmd file under the REM Backup_%name% block.

Typically this will be under the same directory as your payroll programs, here is an example:

 C:\snowdropkcsbk\payrollv10\YYYYMMDDHHMMSS

If you are unable to locate the backup please follow the next section of the article. 

Accessing parameters.cmd to find where your scheduled backups are located

1. Click Start and then open your file explorer.
2. Navigate to your payrollv10 directory, by default this will be C:\Snowdropkcs\Payrollv10\apps\bin.
3. Right click the Parameters.cmd file and click Edit.
4. Under the Backup_%name% block, take a note of the Set BKDRV and the Set BKDIR paths.
5. Close the screen and do not save changes if prompted.
6. Follow the path you noted down, this will direct you to your backup directory.

Integrating Weekly Backups with 3rd party backups

The above To-Disk backup solution is not designed to be the sole backup solution. This is partly because each day the previous weeks backup will be overwritten, meaning there will be only 1 week of data at any given time to restore from.

We would recommend taking a 3rd party tape backups of the Monday to Friday backups each day and keep these rolling for one month.

At the end of the month we recommend taking a Full system 3rd party physical backup of the {Local Disk}:\snowdropkcs\ folder on the Payroll Database Server when the system is off-line and keep these rolling for 1 year.

TIP: Taking system down before backup - On the Payroll Database Server navigate to:{Local Disk}:\snowdropkcs\apps\bin\stopandclear.cmd

TIP: Starting system after backup is complete - On the Payroll Database Server navigate to: {Local Disk}:\snowdropkcs\apps\apps\bin\strtsrvr.cmd

This setup would ensure that you could restore from disk any day within a working month and would ensure that you have a full Physical backup for each month should you need to restore to a point further than a month.

However, these are just recommendations, and if resources allow, you could increase quantity of backups by keeping additional weekly backups, for a period of 52 weeks (using the Ad-Hoc Backup Below). This would mean that you could restore from the end of any week in the last year. Ultimately the choice is yours and you’re Payroll Departments.

TIP: For more information on restoring a backup into Payroll, please see How to restore a backup in SnowdropKCS Payroll.

 

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