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Sage MAS 90 and Sage MAS 200 Technical Tips from DSD Business Systems

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MAS 90 & 200 Tech Tips General Tech Tips Hidden Utilites Identifying MAS 90 CD Roms Copying Company Data MAS90 3.71 PDF Manuals Recovering Disk Space Year End Closing Procedures E-mailing and Invoice or Order Creating a Custom Look-up Are you ready for 4.0? Business Insights Wizard Tape Backup Strategy Windows SP2 for 3.71 & 4.0 FRX Desktop - Custom Financials Share Point Required on Server How to copy a company in 4.0 Accounts Payable Tips Payments &: Wire Transfers Reversing an AP Check 1099 Printing for Year 2003 E-mailing an Order or Invoice Accounts Receivable Tips Bank Transfers Sales Tax Calculation Utility Balance Forward Issue Customer Sales Summary by Year Report Top 15 Customer Rank Report Refunding Sales Tax Customizing Lookups in 4.0 Apply a Credit Memo to an Invoice Processing Customer Deposits E-mailing an Order or Invoice General Ledger Tips Balancing Inventory to the GL Finding G/L Problems & Preparing for 4.0 Out of Balance in 4.0 Trial Balance Recording Bank Transfers with Transaction Journal Entry Batch Processing in G/L 4.0 Inventory Tips Inventory Transaction Types Purchase Order Tips How to Clear Backorderd PO's Managing the PO Clearing Account Payroll Tips Voiding a Direct Deposit Check Arizona State Income Tax Min. $5.00/Month Workaround Updating Federal 941 Form for Year 2003 2003 Payroll Year-End Procedures W-2 Processing W2 Printing for Year 2003 Sales Order Tips Credit Memo with a Credit Card Processing Customer Deposits Crystal Reports Tax Tips Using Form DE-4 to adjust CA State Income Tax Withholding 1099 Printing for Year 2003 W2 Printing for Year 2003 2003 Payroll Year-End Procedures W-2 Processing MAS 90 4.0 Tech Tips Are you Ready for 4.0? Solving Client Server Firewall Issues Finding G/L Problems & Preparing for 4.0 Out of Balance in 4.0 Trial Balance Windows XP SP2 Support for 4.0 Recording Bank Transfers with Transaction Journal Entry Batch Processing in G/L 4.0 How to Copy a Company in 4.0 DSD Services Training MAS 90 & MAS 200 MAS 500 SalesLogix On Site Training Crystal Reports IT & Network Services Internet Services Professional Services Consulting Implementation Support Custom Programming

Sage MAS 90 General Tech Tips from DSD

DSD Sage MAS 90 Tech Tip 12 - Sage MAS 90 Recommended Tape Backup Strategy

...or How to Sleep at Night

by Ken Phillips and Andrew Ault

Tape backups of a company’s application data are critical in case of a massive system failure, or in case individual files need to be restored.

An adequate backup system must include the following elements:

Enough tapes for complete backups to occur on a predefined rotation
Regular testing of the system and media to ensure that restoration is possible
A person that is responsible to execute the backup plan on an on-going basis
The backup usually needs to occur when processing is not taking place (off hours)
A logical tape rotation schedule must be established and followed
Tapes need to be rotated to a secure location off site in case of disaster or theft
A calendar/log must be maintained to schedule tapes and record results

Information Specific to a Sage MAS 90 or Sage MAS 200 Backup

The following is necessary or helpful when backing up a Sage MAS 90 or Sage MAS 200 system:

All Sage MAS 90 data files should be backed up at the same time. DSD does not recommend incremental backups because if a massive computer failure were to occur, multiple incremental backup tapes would probably need to be restored and it would be logistically difficult to ensure that all data files were restored from the relevant series of backup media.
For ease, DSD recommends the entire "\Mas90" folder be backed up. If this is not possible, then at a minimum you need to backup your Sage MAS 90 company data files, the "\SOA" folder (system files) and "\Home" folder (more system files). All folders below "\SOA" and "\HOME" needed to be backed-up as well.
Sage MAS 90 uses a consistent folder naming convention enabling you to identify program and data folders.
Program folders always use the two-character application code. For example, the "\GL" folder contains the General Ledger program files. Program folders tend to be 5MB or less.
The company data folder format is five characters long including the two-character application code, and three-character company code. For example \SOABC is the ABC Demo Data Sales Order data files.
If the "\Mas90" folder is too large, check to see if you have multiple test company or demo company data files which could be deleted. If you no longer need the test company or demo company, you can delete them in Library Master/Utilities/Company Maintenance. When you delete a company the program will list the existing applications, and allow you to select which application files to delete. This can recover a lot disk space. Additionally, the Sage MAS 90 program folders don’t always need to be backed up, since they can be reinstalled from the Sage MAS 90 installation CD. (Don't forget any program patches or enhancements would then also need to be reinstalled).
Another technique for reducing the number of Sage MAS 90 files is to periodically delete all the "*.OLD" files. When the Sage MAS 90 rebuild utilities are run, you can save the original file. The original file is saved with the ".OLD" extension (from the standard ".SOA" file extension). Sage MAS 90 does not provide a tool to purge these "*.OLD" files automatically, so deleting files will need to be done manually through Windows Explorer, or Find Files.

Example Ten Tape Backup Plan

A ten backup tape rotation is very common. The following backup plan is presented to give you a recommended schedule and method for daily backups, which will minimize potential data loss and re-entry time.

This backup scheme requires ten separate sets of backup media. A "set" of backup media means the number of tapes (or other media like disks) needed for a complete backup. This may be one tape (for other media) or more than one tape. Each set of backup diskettes or tapes should be labeled as follows:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Month 1
Month 2
Month 3

When creating the calendar for a given time period, such as the next six months or year of tape rotation, use a standard calendar (whether paper or electronic) and enter the schedule in advance with the planned tape for each day. Then, each day, enter the results of the most recent backup, including:

Who performed the backup
When the backup was performed
Comments about the backup set

The backup schedule provides a daily backup for Monday through Thursday, followed by a weekly backup on Friday. The daily media is then recycled again until the next Friday, when the media for Week 2 is used. The cycle continues until all of the weekly media have been used. The next monthly media set is used in place of the weekly set, and the cycle repeats.

Day1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4 tapes correspond to Monday through Thursday and are used every week.
Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3 are used the first three Fridays in a month cycle.
Month 1, Month 2 and Month 3 are used instead of a "Week X" tape on the fourth Friday of a month cycle.

Off-Site Copy

It is essential to keep an off-site copy in case of disaster or theft. In this example, the off-site copy could be the Monthly or Weekly media (tapes made on Fridays). Additional backups performed at year-end and before period-end processing may also be very helpful in the event that any unforeseen processing problems occur which may affect your data.

Tape Rotation Over the First Four Weeks

Each tape made on a Friday under this plan should be rotated off site when it is done recording. As a practical matter this means that on Monday the backup person should take Friday's backup to the off-site storage location and bring back the previous off-site tape (from the previous Friday).

Week One

Day:	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Tape:	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	*Week 1

Week Two

Day:	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Tape:	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	*Week 2

Week Three

Day:	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Tape:	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	*Week 3

Week Four

Day:	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Tape:	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	*Month 1

*Note that what differs from week to week is the tape selected for Friday.

Make Sure that the System is Working

Ensure backups are periodically tested to ensure the backup program and hardware is working properly. DSD has found several instances where the backups appeared to be occurring, but when they were needed, the backups had not occurred or completed properly! Also, someone in your organization should know how to backup and restore your own data, or individual files in case of an emergency.

The type of media (usually a tape type) you select for your backups should take into consideration how long it takes to back up your data and your selected frequency of backups.

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