Define a backup location

Backups let you recover your data if a disaster occurs, such as when your server fails or flood waters destroy your server. If your backup is on the server that is destroyed in a flood, you cannot recover your data. Therefore, you need to store your backup files on a different server than your data store.

Set the data store service to run using a domain account, grant that account read and write access to a shared network directory, and use the changebackuplocation utility to move your data store backup files to the shared directory on a different machine. Ensure there is enough storage space to hold all the files that are included in a data store backup. The number of files and size of the files will vary depending on your data, your backup schedule, and the number of days you retain backups. Be sure to monitor the size of the backup directory and adjust these settings as needed.

The changebackuplocation utility is installed in the <ArcGIS Data Store installation directory>\datastore\tools directory.

The syntax to run the changebackuplocation utility is as follows:

changebackuplocation <new directory path> --is-shared-folder <true|false> --keep-old-backups <true|false>

For example, type the following to create backup files in a shared directory named ds_backup on a computer named sysshare and opt to keep existing backup files:

changebackuplocation \\sysshare\ds_backups --is-shared-folder true --keep-old-backups true

You are going to change the backup location of the data store. Existing backups will be copied to the new location and it could take a few moments.
Please do not interrupt the process once it has started.

Do you want to continue (Yes or No)? Yes

Change backup frequency

By default, the data store creates a full backup of feature layers once a week and incremental backups either when the log files are full or every 5 minutes, whichever comes first. (Log files allow you to recover to a specific point in time.) The database controls incremental backup creation, but you can change how often the data store creates a full backup by running the updatebackupschedule utility. If your users will be publishing and/or editing large numbers of hosted feature layers, you should increase the frequency with which full data store backups are created.

Note that your backup location must have enough room to store all the backups. Backup size varies depending on the amount of data you have but, if you use default backup settings, backups will contain five full backups and 31 days of incremental backup files. The size of these files depends on the amount and size of your data.

The updatebackupschedule utility is installed in the <ArcGIS Data Store installation directory>\datastore\tools directory.

Change how long backup files are retained

The backup directory retains backup files for 31 days by default. That means if you keep the default backup frequency (every 7 days) and retention schedules (31 days), the backup directory will contain five full backups and 31 days of incremental backup files. The size of these files depends on the amount and size of your data. The machine that stores your backups must have enough disk space for all these files. If you increase the backup frequency, consider decreasing the retention period for the backup files. In the previous section, the backup frequency was increased to every 14 days. To prevent your backup directory from becoming too large, decrease the backup file retention period.

The syntax to run the updatebackupretaindays utility is as follows:

updatebackupretaindays <number of days>

In the following example, backup file retention time is changed to 27 days:

updatebackupretaindays 27

Manually create a backup

You can use the backupdatastore utility to make a full backup of the feature layer data in your data store. You might manually create a full backup prior to making a large number of changes to the data store or prior to upgrading the data store. Or you might create a backup to preserve a copy of the data in a particular state, for example, at the end of the first phase of a project. The login with which you connect to the data store machine to run the backupdatastore utility must have read and write access to the data store backup location.

The syntax to run the backupdatastore utility is as follows:

backupdatastore <backup_name>

Provide a meaningful name for the file so you can find it when you want to restore the data. If you do not specify a name, the utility assigns a default name to the file. The default name is in the format datastorename-timestamp. For example, if your data store is named corpds and you create the backup on July 10, 2014 at 14:25:49:554 UTC, the backup file name is corpds-20140710142549554.

You will be asked to confirm that you want to create a backup. Type yes or y to proceed with backup creation.

backupdatastore --prompt no

Delete manual backups

If you no longer need to keep a backup file you created using the backupdatastore utility (a manual backup), you can run the listbackups utility to get the name of the specific backup file, and then run the deletebackup utility to remove the unneeded file. For example, once you have upgraded your data store and confirmed all feature layers are performing as expected, you could delete the data store backup you created prior to upgrading.

In this example, the database preupgrade1104_bu is deleted.

listbackups

Backup_Name                      Status           Backup_Time         Mode
====================================================================================
phase1proj_bu                    BackupComplete   2014-03-08 14:12    manual
phase2proj_bu                    BackupComplete   2014-06-21 11:43    manual
preupgrade1104_bu                BackupComplete   2014-10-04 09:30    manual
ds_gdt1oomh-20141103160748082    BackupComplete   2014-11-01 03:00    scheduled


deletebackup preupgrade1104_bu
You are attempting to delete backup 'preupgrade1104_bu'. This operation is irreversible.

Do you wish to continue (Yes or No)?yes

Operation completed successfully

Export ArcGIS Data Store managed database

Managed databases store feature layer data. They are the data store for hosted feature layers. When you use ArcGIS Data Store as the managed database for your portal's hosting server, you can export the managed database. You would do this if you need to make a backup of the managed database to be restored to an ArcGIS Data Store installation that is on a machine with a different operating system or is a different ArcGIS Data Store release. Use the exportmanageddb utility to export the database and relevant files. Files are output to a directory that you can move to another ArcGIS Data Store machine. Use the importmanageddb utility to restore the database to the new data store.

For example, if ArcGIS Data Store is running on a Windows server, but your information technology department is switching to Linux servers, you can do the following to move the data store to the new server: