[OBIEE 11g] - Backup and Restore of OBIEE Filesystem Folders on Windows

1. You can download the ubuntu-10.10-dvd-i386.iso fromhttp://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/alternative-downloads and burn it to DVD.
2. Insert the “Ubuntu 10.10 ” boot up CD and boot from it, select “English” and “Try Ubuntu 10.10″ option to use ubuntu without installing it.
3. Goto Task bar then select the “Places” and “Home Folder”.
4. Once the “File Browser” opens select your “Windows C” drive and click on it, to mount the drive.
   
5. In the screenshot the “C:” Drive is show as “290 GB Filesystem”
6. Next open a “Terminal” window.
7. Goto Task bar then select the “Applications” -> “Accessories” -> “Terminal”
8. In the Terminal type “cd /media”
   
9. To see the mounted drives type “ls”
10. Then go into the mounted drive using “cd 3E1A20B91A207057″ or what ever the name of your directory that exists.
11. Once you have identified all your directories containing your Database 11g and OBIEE 11g install, you would need to use the tar command to take a backup of the installations.
12. use the command:
    tar -cf oraclebindb.tar app bea OracleFMW “Program Files”/Oracle
13. here is a brief explaination of the above command
    “tar -ef” -> unix backup command
    “oraclebindb.tar” -> name of the file where all the directories will be compressed/zipped into.
    the database and OBIEE installed directories are the rest of the arguments to the tar command: app, bea, OracleFMW, “Program Files”/Oracle
14. It takes around 10 to 15 mins to backup around 15GB of your folders.
15. Once it prompt comes back out type “ls -ltr” to check that the file “oraclebindb.tar” is created.
16. Now go back to the task bar “Places” -> “Home Folder” to open up the “File Browser”.
17. Right click on the “C:” equivalent folder, here it is “290GB Filesystem” and select “Unmount” to unmout the folder.
18. Goto the top right hand corner and click on the CIRCLE icon and select “Shut Down…” to shutdown your system.
19. Now remove your bootup Ubuntu 10.04 cd and boot upto windows.
20. You should now see your backup file “oraclebindb.tar”.
21. Do not open/touch this file in the Windows enviroment as it may get corrupted.
22. It should be only accessed in the same version of Ubuntu/Linux with which it was created.

To Restore your corrupted Database and OBIEE installation directories in your “C:” Windows directory

1. shutdown you windows system.
2. Insert the “Ubuntu 10.10″ Ubuntu CD while and boot from it.
3. Select the “Try Ubuntu 10.10″ option when asked for.
4. Open the “Terminal” Window as mentioned in the above steps.
5. Then goto your equivalent “C:” drive where you have your Oracle Database and OBIEE folders, then run the following commands:

6. cd /media/3E1A20B91A207057	-> “to go to your equivalent C: drive”
   rm -rf app bea OracleFMW “Program Files”/Oracle	-> “to remove the existing Database and OBIEE folders”
   tar -xf oraclebindb.tar	-> “to restore/unzip the Database and OBIEE folders”

7. When your’re getting the “Unable to login screen” while login tohttp://localhost:9704/analytics.
8. Make sure that the following entries are updated at the end of C:WindowsSystem32driversetchosts file
   127.0.0.1 localhost
   10.0.0.2 sriwin7
   
9. Also make sure that your DNS Server is able to resolve your ip-address. i.e ping your dns servers from your localhost, you can use the “ipconfig” command to find out your dns servers as show below:
   e.g:
   ping 203.92.63.66
   ping 203.122.63.152
   
10. Then you should get the “Reply from 203.92.63.66: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64″ after issuing the ping command.

Summary:
Since there is no proper and cheap tool that allows you to backup and restore your windows directories with those long paths, and file names with special characters, a free alternative is to using the unix/linux tar command which effectively backsup/compresses all your Database and OBIEE folders.
This method doesn’t take care of backing up the other things like: Registry entries, updating the environment PATH variables.
Make sure to follow the backup procedures on a feshly installed Database, OBIEE install and also note down all the required user/passwords.