Every business is now reliant on computerised systems, it is therefore essential for the well being of a company to have constant access to these systems, such as finance software like Pegasus Opera 3. As such it is essential to perform regular, monitored and verified data backups.
IT Systems as well as the associated software are now extremely resilient; however there will always be occasional circumstances, beyond the control of the organisation, which may lead to integrity issues with data.
This may be the direct result of a virus, hardware failure, power interruptions or even user associated issues.
Types of Backup
Any business software such as Pegasus Opera 3 will be core to any business, not only will it integrate to every other business application, such as a companies booking or warehouse system, it also contains many solutions which satisfies the different functions within an organisation i.e. Payroll, order processing, stock control or sales and marketing.
How it is used within an organisation will influence any recommended backup procedures.
At Intsys we recommend that you possess daily, weekly and monthly backups of your Pegasus Opera 3 data. It is also necessary (Pegasus Opera usually prompts the user) to perform a backup of data prior to performing major processing functions such as a payroll update or Nominal period end.
The responsibility for Pegasus Opera backups should not only be the company IT team but also the users.
A) IT Team Complete System Backup
This would usually be managed by the entity responsible for the IT support; this may be an individual an internal IT Department or an external support provider.
Usually system backups would be performed automatically, out of office hours to prevent interruption of the business.
It is necessary to backup, in its entirety, the complete Opera installation, to include all sub folders and files within. It is possible to exclude certain folders however to guarantee that the system can be restored, without issue, we recommend a complete backup.
Backups must be monitored and occasionally verified to ensure that the backup process is full proof. Daily, weekly and monthly backups should be performed.
Monthly backups, interim weekly backups (these can be overwritten the following month) and the daily backups (again the Monday- Thursday can be over-written) should be retained.
This type of backup may be necessary in case of a virus infection or corruption of data affecting the whole system.
There are various different programs used for this and your IT team should be able give advice on this. PLEASE NOTE: Incremental Backups are not suitable for use with any Pegasus products.
B) Pegasus Opera 3 Data Backup
Pegasus users should take responsibility for backing up their Opera system. Opera has an integral backup routine, which is easy to use and allows selective backups of companies.
– You can use the Backup command in Pegasus Opera 3 to backup your data for selected companies (This process can only be carried out by a User with “Manager Rights”).
This type of backup will be more appropriate in the event of corruption to the company data in Pegasus Opera 3 or when users need to reverse major changes such as period ends made within Pegasus Opera 3. These backups allow you to restore the data easily to a previous point using the restore wizard within Opera.
You can access this function via Administration > System> Utilities > Backup.
The backup process in Pegasus Opera 3 is controlled by a wizard that will give you various options for the type of backup you want to do. You will be able to choose from just the company data i.e. accounts, transactions and settings; or you can include the following additional files:
PDF’s
Spool files
Email documents
PDM (Pegasus Document Management Files)
SPM files
Export files
Key Considerations before taking a backup in Pegasus Opera 3:
You must ensure that no other users are logged in to Pegasus Opera 3 or XRL to allow you to continue.
If you are backing up any additional files, make sure no one is using the files before you start the backup.
The amount of time needed to backup the data is affected by the following:
The number of companies selected
The number of modules used in the installation
The number of records [...]
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