What tasks are required to maintain the Voyager server?
- Article Type: Q&A
- Product: Voyager
- Relevant for Installation Type: Local;
Question
What common tasks are required in order to maintain my Voyager system and keep it running smoothly?
Answer
Backups
- Maintaining, and testing the quality of backups is an obligation.
- Ex Libris installs a default backup script that stops the software, takes a disk snapshot, starts the software, then writes the snapshot to tape
- Alternate backups are allowed, and Ex Libris recommends that backups are: run nightly, full, and cold
Reboots
- While many applications can be run indefinitely in linux/unix without issue, periodic reboots of the Voyager server are mandatory to ensure correct functionality.
- Recommended: Daily reboot of server.
- Minimum: Weekly restart of Oracle, and Voyager application.
Voyager Support recommends rebooting the server on a weekly or monthly basis. If Support receives a report of mysterious issues with Voyager and the server has been up for more than a month, our recommendation will be to reboot it. If the server has been up for more than a year, we will recommend the server be rebooted during the day -- to ensure there are no problems bringing it back up.
Regens
- KEYWORD regens are a periodically required maintenance procedure. Frequency depends on usage and database size.
- Failing to run a keyword regen when required, will result in slower search performance, or the failure of the search to retrieve all relevant records.
- A keyword regen is required if a bulk import is conducted without keyword indexing.
- A keyword regen is required if the size of the dynamic index file is greater that half the size of the largest static index file.
- A FULL regen reindexes all the Voyager indexes (see: Types of Voyager regens). FULL regens are done during a server upgrade as part of the procedure. There are other times when a FULL regen is required, such as after an authority load project or when enormous numbers of records are deleted or reloaded (such as during significant data cleanup).
Rotate Logs/Monitor Disk Space
- Monitor disk space usage using df -h /m1. If /m1 usage is >80% Ex Libris recommends taking measures to clear or add disk space.
- Rotate OS and Voyager log files on a regularly or automation rotation. Maintaining logs on the system for >14 days is usually not neccesary.
- If log.voyager becomes 2 GB or larger in size, Voyager application componenets associated with this log will fail to start.
Additional Information
Regens
Who can run a keyword regen?
How do I determine if keyword regen is needed?
What kind of impact to Voyager during keyword regen?
Are MARC records read-only during regens?
Disk Space
WebVoyage
How to Properly Restart Voyager, Apache & Tomcat
Creating new skins in WebVoyage
- Article last edited: 08-Oct-2013