PDMWorks Stop Service Automatically for Backup

Experience has taught us that it is important for a database to be
"quiet" (shut down) during backup, which has been confirmed by our
SolidWorks VAR. We need to automatically stop the PDMWorks service
each night before the backup starts, then automatically restart the
service when the backup completes. I presume all PDMWorks customers
have encountered this issue; can anyone provide us with the
recommended method for automatically stopping and restarting the
PDMWorks service? Running PDMWorks 2004 on Windows Server 2003.

Thank you in advance,
Marc

 

There are two ways most people deal with this.

1) use back up software that can stop and restart services

2) don't back up the executables, only the vault data. you don't need to
stop the service, but it would be a good idea to at least lock out the
vault in the vault admin tool. I don't think there is any API access to
lock out the vault through the PDMW API.

matt


(cadmgr2004) wrote in

 

You could probably also quickly write a VB.net app to stop the service at
say 1:00 am and then restart it at 3:00 am

Evan

 

Went through this 6 months ago. There is a thread on the SW forum on how to
Stop the PDMWorks server. We had it scripted for backup purposes. Any
competent IT person can fix permissions so the CAD manager can start and
stop these scripts remotely on the server.

 

Try NET START "PDMWorks Server"

I am not sure off the top of my head if the name of the service is
right. There is a NET STOP also available. It is possible to use this
over the network as well to remotely stop a service. Permissions will
be the biggest problem if you do that.

 

I found some stuff I wrote up a while back. You have to create three files
named:

StartPDM.cmd
StopPDM.cmd
QueryPDM.cmd

After creating the files insert the following text. Change the reference to
the server from \\PC3 to whatever is appropriate for your system. It is a
good idea to test this stuff before using in production.

In StartPDM.cmd:

@ECHO OFF
REM
REM SET THE NAME OF THE SYSTEM
REM
SET PDMSERVER=\\PC3
REM
REM DON'T MESS WITH ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
REM
echo %PDMSERVER% PDMWorks Start
echo *******************
sc %PDMSERVER% start "PDMWorks Server"
pause
sc %PDMSERVER% query "PDMWorks Server"


In StopPDM.cmd put:

@ECHO OFF
REM
SET PDMSERVER=\\PC3
REM
REM DON'T MESS WITH ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
REM
echo %PDMSERVER% PDMWorks Stop
echo *******************
sc %PDMSERVER% stop "PDMWorks Server"
pause
sc %PDMSERVER% query "PDMWorks Server"

In QueryPDM.cmd

@ECHO OFF
REM
REM SET THE NAME OF THE SYSTEM
REM
SET PDMSERVER=\\PC3
REM
REM DON'T MESS WITH ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
REM
echo %PDMSERVER% PDMWorks Status
echo *******************
sc %PDMSERVER% query "PDMWorks Server"
pause


Then if you want to change vaults you can create a .reg file and just change
one line to point to wherever your vault is. You only have to change
rootPath.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DesignSource\PDM/Works\Server]
"rootPath"="G:\\pdmworks\\"
"Skip Structure Validation"="FALSE"
"Skip Tree Info Build"="FALSE"
"Skip Tree Build"="FALSE"

 

Experience has taught us that it is important for a database to be

IT determined their backup app supports pre- and post-backup scripts,
which is ideal because otherwise we would have needed to constantly
tweak the timing of our batchfiles with the duration of the backup.

We created two batchfiles that run on each end of the backup:
pdmstop.bat: @ECHO OFF
net stop "PDMWorks Server"
pdmstart.bat: @ECHO OFF
net start "PDMWorks Server"
Not elegant, but insures PDMWorks is quiet during backup.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

 

Make sure they wait till it is truly shut down and likewise truly up
and running before use. That is one reason I put the query in my
scripts. For large vaults startup and shutdown may take a bit of time.