Introduction

Backing up multiple databases simultaneously may make some of the backups fail with error XDMP-FORESTOPIN.

Details

While configuring a scheduled backup, one can also select to backup the associated auxiliary databases like security, schemas, triggers. Generally, all the content databases share these auxiliary databases so issue may arise when more than one scheduled backup tries to backup the same auxiliary database. When two backups try to backup the same auxiliary database, the backup will fail throwing XDMP-FORESTOPIN error. Generally this error comes when the system attempts to start one forest operation (backup, restore, remove, clear, etc.) while another, exclusive operation is already in progress. For example, starting a new backup while a previous backup is still in progress.

Recommendations

One should be extra cautious while configuring scheduled backups and selecting auxiliary databases with them. If one really wants to backup the auxiliary databases with the content database then one needs to pay special attention to the timing and ensure that no two backups pose this timing threat.

As most of the applications don't make frequent changes to their auxiliary databases hence MarkLogic recommends to schedule backup for them separately - instead of selecting them together with the content databases.