Creating a recovery log

A recovery log allows you to export the latest revisions of documents or renditions from their streams folders to a location of your choice outside the vault in the event that the vault is unavailable. The documents can then be used normally until they can be replaced in the vault. Recovery logs should be created on a regular basis by a scheduled task similar to preparing backup files.

To create a recovery log with the Create Recovery Log Wizard:

1. In Meridian Enterprise Administrator, click EDM Server in the left pane. The active vaults are listed in the right pane.
2. Select the vault in the right pane for which you want to create a recovery log.
3. From the Action menu, point to All Tasks and select Create Recovery Log Wizard. The Create Recovery Log Wizard appears.
4. Click Next. The Select Vault page appears.
5. Click options or type values using the descriptions in the following table.

6. Click Next. The Specify Recovery Log Location page appears.
7. Type a path and file name or click Browse, select a path, type a file name to store the recovery log, and click Save.

Tip    Select the vault’s Backup folder so that the recovery logs will be backed up along with the vault backup files.

Tip     Give the recovery log a descriptive name, such as MyVault Full Recovery Log.bat. When creating incremental recovery logs, use a name such as MyVault Incremental Recovery Log.bat. These names will make identifying the logs easier.

8. Click Next. The When to Create Recovery Log page appears.
9. Select Now to create the recovery log immediately upon finishing the wizard. Select Later to select options to schedule a job to run at a later time:

1. Type a user ID and password for the job to run as and click OK. By default, the job will be repeated daily at the current time.
   
   Note We recommend that you specify a user account with a password that never expires. If the user account is removed or the password either expires or is changed, the scheduled task will fail and recovery logs will not be created.
2. Click Set Schedule to modify the job’s schedule in the new dialog that appears. Select options on the Schedule page to coordinate the job with other tasks running on the computer and the time when regular system backups occur.
3. Click OK when finished. A new job is created for the Windows Task Scheduler that may be modified with the normal Windows administration tools. For more information about Task Scheduler, refer to the Windows documentation.

10. Click Next. The Configure Recovery Log Cleanup page appears.
11. Click options or type values using the descriptions in the following table.

12. Click Next. The Completing the Create Recovery Log Wizard page appears.
13. Click Finish. The recovery log is created immediately or at the scheduled time.

To create a recovery log with a command line:

1. Run the program AMRecLog.exe with the following syntax and the parameters described in the preceding tables. By default, the program is located in the folder C:\Program Files\BC-Meridian\Program.

AMRecLog.exe ["M:<ServerName>"] "<VaultName>" "<RecoveryLogfile name>" [/INCREMENTAL] [/DAYSTOKEEP=n]] [/RENDITIONS]

Note    The parameter names are case-sensitive and must be specified in upper case.

Warning NEW  If errors occur during the creation of a recovery log, the log will contain error messages. An entry will also be added to the Windows Application event log with the number and types of errors that occurred and the path of the recovery log file. You should monitor the Application event log for such entries and resolve all errors found in the recovery log to ensure that the vault can be completely recovered in the case of an emergency.

Tip    Run the Create Recovery Log Wizard once with Incremental recovery log cleared to schedule creation of a full recovery log task (that is, containing entries for every document in the vault) to run each weekend. Run the Create Recovery Log Wizard a second time with Incremental recovery log enabled to schedule creation of an incremental recovery log nightly, that is, containing only entries for documents created that day. The weekend will allow more time for the full recovery log task to complete, which might be difficult to schedule without conflicting with other nightly administrative tasks. Nightly incremental recovery logs will complete quickly, making it easier to coordinate with other nightly tasks. To further safeguard vault documents, also schedule a recovery log task to run at mid-day when the vault is least busy, reducing the number of documents at risk to those created in one half day.