Tech Forum

I'm curious how many MLS backups it is prudent to keep. Frankly I'm not sure why we do backups at all -- the only reason I can think of would be if someone made a change but didn't do a send/receive, but that is bad practice. I know people at HQ tried to get the restore command removed completely from MLS as it will generally cause nothing but problems with the sync with CUBS. Everything is in CUBS now and usually you should just do a refresh if there is an issue. And if restoring isn't needed then neither is a backup. But at most though I think a month ought to be more than sufficient, and really just the latest backup.

craiggsmith wrote:I'm curious how many MLS backups it is prudent to keep. Frankly I'm not sure why we do backups at all -- the only reason I can think of would be if someone made a change but didn't do a send/receive, but that is bad practice. I know people at HQ tried to get the restore command removed completely from MLS as it will generally cause nothing but problems with the sync with CUBS. Everything is in CUBS now and usually you should just do a refresh if there is an issue. And if restoring isn't needed then neither is a backup. But at most though I think a month ought to be more than sufficient, and really just the latest backup.

There are still some things that are only stored locally. HT/VT (but not for much longer), custom fields, out-of-unit records (not much longer for that too), non-member records and custom report definitions. But I would think the latest backup should be fine for all of those.

As I understand it, CHQ does a backup of the MLS data every 30 days. But I don't know how deep. But since CUBs, I'm not sure as there is any need for "depth" even if one does find file corruption going back 60 days.

Arguably, there may not be much of a technical reason for local backups anymore. Other then the fact the program forces you to do backups.

The real question I have - how are you going to manage it? Purge one week every week? Manually? Seems like a lot of work. Monthly? Or perhaps annually as part of closing out the year? Or were you going to write a script?

I suspect most units do it based on space available and "when they get to it". Some units don't even do that. I end up purging everything over 3 years old when I replace the computer.

Thanks everyone. I guess I was just thinking about finance data, but it is true that HQ pulls a actual MLS backup. I thought it was more often than 30 days; they always seemed to have the latest when I had an issue. But not sure if that includes everything as eblood66 mentioned.

But it sounds like we don't need to keep much. This came up because one of the wards ran out of space on their USB drive so I thought I'd see what you thought. When I replace a computer I usually just bring over the last 4 and the previously year end backup in case there's a tax question, but I don't know if that's even useful. Maybe just a simple manual yearly purge is a good practice.

A backup is captured at headquarters on a monthly basis. The actual day of the month varies. I looked the last two backup dates for three wards in my stake: March 29 and April 26, March 8 and April 7, March 22 and April 22.

A unit can install MLS with an empty database and most data will be restored from headquarters. The two main items that are not stored at headquarters (except in the monthly backup) are home and visiting teaching data and budget allotments inside the unit (amounts allotted to different organizations). Home and visiting teaching data won't be an issue much longer.

Thanks, I didn't realize the local budget allocations weren't kept. The CUBS team still recommends never to do a restore, so not sure what good the backup would be, but keeping a few doesn't hurt.

I would be really sad to lose all my custom reports....which I don't think are backed up by headquarters...(which I may lose anyway, when MLS goes)