DSMAINT BACKUP: Citrix XenApp with MS SQL Server Express database data store

This blog post has outdated information and is not guaranteed of it's accuracy for the XenApp 6.5 Administration or Advanced Administration exams. A new post will be written shortly to replace this one.

This is mainly for Citrix XenApp beginners, but is useful knowledge for the Citrix XenApp 6.5 1Y0-A20 and 1Y0-A22 exams.

When planning to backup a farm's data store located on a Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 R2 database on the same server and path on which it is located - for this example the data store is located on a server named XA001 and located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture\MF20.dsn - an administrator should run the command:

dsmaint backup "C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Independent Management Architecture\NewMF20.dsn"

Run this command on XA001. It requires the path to which the backup database file will be copied.

The reason the backup database file is named "NewMF20.dsn" is because naming it the same name as the original, "MF20.dsn", on the same path on which the original database exists can cause irreparable damage to the data store. To avoid this possible issue, there is the choice of backing up the database to a different path than that of the original database.

Note: Do not use this parameter to back up SQL Server or Oracle data stores.

Information about DSMAINT at Citrix eDocs: XenApp > XenApp 6.5 for Windows Server 2008 R2 > Manage > XenApp Server Utilities Reference > DSMAINT

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