Name format of a CA PAM scheduled database backup file

Products

• CA Privileged Access Manager (PAM)

Issue/Introduction

For documentation purposes it may be necessary to understand the format of the scheduled backup files. This article explains how the filename for the backups is formatted.

Resolution

The scheduled backup files have the following format:

gkscheddb`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`_"$CURRENTVERSION"

where $CURRENTVERSION is the PAM version seen at the bottom of the PAM UI.

Example: gkscheddb20260101030302_4.2.3.60.gz.bin - This backup was taken on Jan 1, 2026 at 03:03:02 UTC, at which time the server was running PAM version 4.2.3.60.

Additional Information

The PAM version string ends with the build number of a (maintenance) release at the time it becomes generally available. It only gets updated when an upgrade patch is applied and therefore does not provide information on the patch level.

PAM can only restore database backups matching the current release, and only backups from the same server, or from a server in the same cluster. A new PAM server would not be able to read passwords from a database backup taken on another server, unless it was clustered (temporarily) with the older server, see the corresponding note on documentation page Restore the Database from a Backup File.