Back up Epic Hosted on VMWare

Use Commvault software to back up and recover Epic EHR systems hosted on VMWare virtual machines.

Procedure

1. Configure the VMWare VM for backup.

   Verify that IntelliSnap is enabled for the VM Group as Epic requires snapshots for backups and restores.

   Verify that the VSS writer service for InterSystems IRIS is installed on the Windows VM. To enable VSS during backup, configure the VMware VM to use File system and application consistent as the backup type.

2. Perform the following steps inside the guest VM before performing a backup:

   1. Ask Epic for the scripts to freeze and thaw the databases.

      Note: Epic typically sends these scripts with the initial software delivery of the installation package. The pre-script is called instfreeze and the post-script is called instthaw.

      • Copy the freeze script as /usr/sbin/pre-freeze-script

      • Copy the thaw script as /usr/sbin/post-thaw-script

      Caution

      The name and location of the scripts must match.

   2. Set permissions on the scripts as follows:

      # chown root.root /usr/sbin/pre-freeze-script /usr/sbin/post-thaw-script
      

      # chmod 0700 /usr/sbin/pre-freeze-script /usr/sbin/post-thaw-script
      

3. Perform a backup operation.

4. Perform a restore operation.

   • Restore as VMWare files.

   • Restore to a cleanroom site.