Ask Questions and Find Answers

Cross-referencing. Please limit yourself to one thread per topic in future, and collect all the important information in one place.

• https://liferay.dev/forums/-/message_boards/message/119775912
• https://liferay.dev/forums/-/message_boards/message/119730488
• https://liferay.dev/forums/-/message_boards/message/119693211

I mean, do I need to use a specific application to back up these files?
And is it possible to backup the entire portal folder?

The instructions tell you what to do. The tools you use are whatever fits your environment best. mysqldump is one option (but make sure nobody's writing to the database while you back it up. Also, for the document library, make sure you get an atomic copy.

Key is, as I said elsewhere, to validate that you can use your backup to restore to a completely new system. Otherwise it's worthless. This will tell you if your choice of tools is appropriate.
And as you ask for it in some other thread: Backup instructions are identical for Liferay DXP and Liferay Portal CE.

That is not enough (unless you are using the database to store your documents).


Have you tested your backup? One issue you always face is what happens if a backup occurs in the middle of a flurry of updates. At any single point in the middle of the flurry, if a backup is taken, does that backup represent a complete database or could it have partial updates that won't make sense without some number of updates that happened just after that point...

Also, have you tested your restore and relaunch process? If you haven't, well then you don't really have a backup, all you have is a file you're creating every hour...

For it to truly be a backup, you have to know the outcome of restoring the DB, pointing an instance of Liferay at it, starting it up and testing it out. Are the docs still there? Are the articles still there? Is the site functional and complete? etc etc.

If you don't do that, well then you're just assuming that you can do a restore and, well, trust me when I say that if it ever comes time that you need to restore, how upset are folks going to be if you find out that the restore doesn't work?