From "CU Chem Stockroom - Project Outline v2012-11-28v2", pg 2:

Scope of Work => Phase 2: Planning & Design => Task 2.3 – Technical Preparation

• Purpose: to coordinate final technical preparation for implementation. This task will confirm hosting location, access, back-ups, etc. It will also determine how many of which QuickBooks licenses CU will require.
• Approach: Brightworks expects to gain a better understanding of what will need to occur for this task during the system requirements (task 1.2) and proof of concept (task 2.1) tasks. The technical preparation discussions can start concurrently with the Proof-of-Concept phase so the project teams can gain a better understanding of final project costs as soon as possible.
• Deliverable: finalized implementation budget and timeline to +/-10% based on any changes to work identified during this phase.

Considerations and decisions required regarding all backups

Frequency of backups

Confirmation of bakups

Verification of process

• End-to-end check
• Confirm restore works 100%
  • Depends not just on backup, but also on documentation and skill set available

Notification

• On postiive? And/or on negative?
• Who?

Manual validity checks

• Frequency

QuickBooks (QB) on Windows 7 (Win) Virtual Machine (VM)

File back up

With the data file, a restore gets back the core business data.

Export QB database (DB) to a file.

Copy that file to A&S file server.

• Requires account with correct A&S file server access.

VM back up

With a VM back up, in addition to a data file snapshot (see above), also gets a copy of the structure. Thus consider doing at least whenever there is a change to the structure, such as changes to the QB structure or OS configuration. (And right before major changes to ensure current roll-back image is available!)

Do it manually.

Requires shutting off QB, and takes a while (~1/2 day).

Web kiosk server on Linux Virtual Machine (VM)

Q: Bother backing up MySQL database (DB)?

If yes:

Export MySQL DB to a file.

Copy that file to A&S file server.

• Requires account with correct A&S file server access.

Other

Require structure/ rebuild docs for QB (Brightworks) and Apache/MySQL/PHP?/etc (Gorges).