Archiving Prinergy Jobs

[SpicyVindaloo]

Since we didn't purchase the Archiving option for Prinergy I'm trying to come up with an alternative way to "Archive" jobs.My thought was to copy the whole job folder to external hard drives and then delete them off the server. That way the history stays intact and if we need the job we can just copy the folder back onto the Prinergy server.

Anyone know of any downsides to doing this? Anyone have an alternative solution? We need to keep all files in the User Defined folders which can get over 100+ GB.

[Joe]

Well in theory it sounds like it should work as that is kind of how Kodak Archiving works. By that I mean it archives the whole folder to a Windows backup compressed file and then purges the job folder from the system but keeps it in the database. So when you want to restore it you can still go back to the job in Workshop and restore which then finds the compressed backup files and uncompresses it back into the system. So like I said, it sounds like it would work but who knows what Kodak has up their sleeve to prevent that.

With your method, once you delete the folder from the Jobs drive the files will be gone but I assume Prinergy would still list the job in Workshop. Not sure what would happen if you tried to open it with the folder missing though. In the above archiving scenario the folder is missing too but it can open the job and if you try to access a file it tells you it isn't available. And I'm also not sure that once you restored the folder to the jobs drive if Prinergy would still recognize it properly.

I would definitely try it thoroughly with a copy of a job or three or ten before doing it for real.

[SpicyVindaloo]

I tried it with a test job and it seemed to go alright. I tried to open a pdf from Workshop after the files were deleted and it clicked a few times and stopped cause it couldn't find the files. When I copied the folder back. everything seems to work as normal. Opening PDF's, creating VPS's, outputting to proofs, etc.


I think the trainer briefly mentioned this as a "poor man's archiving". Just not sure of any long term problems that might pop up.

The place I worked previously had the Archiving feature and it worked great. Just seems like an awful lot of $$$ to pay for a script.

[Joe]

Not sure of the long term effects. Like if you do a compress database function...will it delete things in the database like those jobs? Or after a Prinergy upgrade? Of course as long as you have all of the old files you could always re-create the job manually and process the files back into it.

[frailer]

 I can't imagine not having XMF's Archiving function. I don't know what Kodak (sur)charge for theirs, and am not even aware that we were given the option of not having it, but by the sound of it, it would be doing a similar stunt to Prinergy's.
My impression is that is is akin to ZIP'ing it, effectively, in a proprietary way. It's 'locked'/safe, and can be 'unpacked' as needed.

I imagine that the decision not to have it didn't come from prepress.   :rolleyes:

[Joe]

Not sure of the dollars for the archiving feature but I don't think it was that much. Where they get you is if you want it automated you have to also buy Rules Based Automation (RBA) which is very expensive.

[Farabomb]

No RBA and no archiving here. I delete the unneeded files (.vps, JDFmarks, ect.) keep the refined files and the preps file. Backup all the files in the folder to an external drive and then delete off the server. Need to redo a job, pull old #, find folder, copy onto server, rename with new # and plate.

Half the time the "exact reprint" is on a different sheet size or something so I have to re-impose it anyway.

[Joe]

No RBA and no archiving here. I delete the unneeded files (.vps, JDFmarks, ect.) keep the refined files and the preps file. Backup all the files in the folder to an external drive and then delete off the server. Need to redo a job, pull old #, find folder, copy onto server, rename with new # and plate.

Half the time the "exact reprint" is on a different sheet size or something so I have to re-impose it anyway.

There is the benefit of no database.

CONNECT does have that type of archiving built in at no extra cost. It exports everything in the job folder except for the original files and zips it so you do have the refined files and the impositions. Store the zip offline and you can import it back in later. It works fine as long as you don't need the original customer files.

[Farabomb]

That's just what do on the prinergy server side. On the workstation side I have all the customer originals and any working files I used as well as the files for print that are the pre normalized prinergy files. I have a folder called trash when done that houses the 900 different revisions for when they decide to try and shove a mistake up our ass. That gets deleted about 6 months after the job is printed just in case something comes up. Overall this has worked but make sure you keep an eye on those external drives. I lost one before I could fully backup the drive and lost a good amount of data.

[mc hristel]

We have almost the exact process as Spicy has described and it works fine. 

We work in 'week' folders on Prinergy and one day each week merge the working files with the Prinergy files and copy to blueray disks. Delete the files when copied over, and move the Prinergy database job shells into an 'Archived' folder maintaining the 'week' folder structure. When we need to go get a job back we can easily search and figure out which week the file came from and restore it. It does take some organization and planning though so don't expect it to be a quick process.

[Farabomb]

With HDD storage being as cheap as it is you may want to move off fragile bluray and onto actual drives. More storage density means less searching through the weeks. Use EasyFind on a mac and it will find it right quick. You can also just buy a drive toaster and swap in bare drives.

[SpicyVindaloo]

Thanks for all the replies. I've done some more tests and can't see any issues. Fingers crossed.
BTW - From what I remember, I think the Archiving option was 15k.

[DigiCorn]

We didn't have the archiving option at my old shop either, so we would take the job, export it (to .zip) and archive the .zip file manually on local HDD storage. When you import the .zip archive, the .zip must be at the root level of Prinergy AND you will want to rename it to the new job number at the initial time of importing, because this is the ONLY chance you have to rename the job. It can and will overwrite the old files if still active in the system. Once imported, you'll have to relaunch Preps and change the tagline there as well, or else your exact reprint will be just that, complete with the old tag definition.

[RMPrepress]

We are new Prinergy 8 users since January (launching our InSite Portal in the next week or so).
I must say it was a rocky start after using Esko Nexus for several years but we are now out of the woods
and very very happy with Prinergy.

We got a Prinergy Connect Server with 5Tb of storage on the J drive.
So we can go a while without backups...but we don't wait that long.
We have added a Lacie 2Big USB 3 8TB external HD (4TB actual storage with RAID) to the Prinergy Server as a Volume (L:).
So when you are in Workshop it is available for use and Mac operators can also mount it to their desktop.



We do all of our work on our Macs straight from the user defined folders of each Job folder all original supplied files are kept untouched in the WebUploads folder.  Once InSite is up running this is where the customer uploaded files will end up too.

I have an operator running exports of shipped jobs every couple of weeks those exports end up in the user defined folder of each job and that .zip is all you need for an exact reprint.  Then once the exports are done (you can run as many at a time as you want by the way from the opening window of workshop) we mark the jobs as completed while the group selected for exports is still selected.  This way an operator knows if he gets an exact reprint of a job still in workshop he can do an import job and go straight to the last # and grab the exported .zip file and off he goes really fast and reliable.
Then we manually copy each job folder marked Job Completed to the external L: Volume into a folder named 2017 Backups.
Because this is a volume and workshop can see it when you get an exact reprint 5 months later you can just start a new job using the import job option and go the L: Volume and find your old job # and go grab the exported .zip.
If it is a reprint with change then you do a new job and go grab the old job folder and load into the Webuploads of the new job and then do what you need to.

The Lacie 2Big is a great external and the USB 3 is plenty fast enough for the Mac operators to use and for backups.
Our Prinergy Dell Windows Server 2012 does have two USB 3 (SS) which is great because USB 2 would be to slow for this setup.

I rambled a bit but all this is very easy to do and not that time consuming once you get used to it.
It is great having your backups and exports so easily available while working with workshop.

Oh and one more thing, I am also using that external L: Volume as storage for Shadow Copies of the J: Drive and using the J: drive as storage for the C: drive Shadow copies.

[Joe]

We have the same sort of setup though without that much storage and our Jobs drive on a Tertiary server that was our old Prinergy Primary server. We have an external setup as our 'K' drive where we copy jobs via RBA that we don't want to keep long term so the 'K' drive is used as temporary holding place where we delete the jobs about 3 - 6 months later. We are still running Windows 2008 R2 also. We are going to add more storage to our Prinergy server and move our Jobs location back onto the primary soon and have Kodak come out and upgrade our Prinergy and Insite server to Windows 2012 R2 and upgrade to Prinergy 8 at that time. So fun times ahead in the next few months.