Configure disaster recovery for web GIS—Portal for ArcGIS (10.4.1)

You can replicate your web GIS to a disconnected standby deployment. The standby deployment can be brought online and made your active deployment if your primary deployment fails.

Because the standby deployment is not actively connected to your primary deployment, you can set up the standby deployment in another building or city to guard against downtime due to such occurrences as localized natural disasters or power outages. Keep in mind, though, that the standby deployment must be accessible from your web GIS clients.

Export the components of your web GIS to a compressed file, and use that file to set up and maintain the standby deployment.

Note:

The webgisdr utility does not move map service cache tiles. If your web GIS includes map service or hosted tile layer caches, make a backup copy of all directories where your cache tiles are stored (for example, the entire arcgiscache directory under C:\arcgisserver\directories\ or <ArcGIS Server installation directory>/arcgis/server/usr/directories). Manually place the copies in the corresponding arcgiscache directory on the standby deployment.

Export web GIS

Use the webgisdr utility with the export operation and a properties file to export your web GIS deployment. The exported file includes your portal, hosting server, ArcGIS Data Store (relational and tile cache), and federated servers. The file size and time it takes to create it varies depending on how many items are in your portal, the number and type of hosted web layers you have, how many federated servers you have, and how many GIS Servers are in your hosting and federated servers.

You can find the webgisdr utility in the Portal for ArcGIS tools directory. The following criteria must be met to use this utility:

The shared directory you specify must be large enough to contain the exported file. Do a test export of your web GIS to get an idea how large the file will be, decide how many files you intend to keep in the shared directory, and size the directory accordingly.
The domain account or accounts you use to run your ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and ArcGIS Data Store services must have write access to the shared directory you specify for the backup files.

Follow these steps to export your primary web GIS deployment:

Make a copy of the template properties file. You can save the copy in the same directory as the template or to a new directory.
The template properties file—webgisdr.properties—is installed in C:\Program Files\Portal\tools\webgisdr by default.
In this example, the copy of the file is named mywebgis.properties and saved in C:\propfiles.
Open the copy of the properties file and edit it to include information specific to your site.
- SHARED_LOCATION = <location for backup files>
  Designate a shared location in which to create the backup file. The domain account that runs the ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and ArcGIS Data Store service must have write access to this location. Be sure the location is large enough to hold the backup file. Though the file is compressed, the file can be quite large depending on the amount and type of data you have. If you have hosted scene layers and caches and set INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES to true, the file can be especially large. When the location is a folder, the disaster recovery tool will import the latest backup file. If the SHARED_LOCATION property refers to a specific backup file, that file will be imported by the disaster recovery tool.
  Legacy:
  At Portal for ArcGIS 10.4, this property was SHARED_FOLDER.
- PORTAL_ADMIN_URL = <portal admin directory URL>
  Specify the URL of the Portal for ArcGIS admin directory. Use the format https://portalhostname.domain.com:7443/arcgis.
- PORTAL_ADMIN_USERNAME = <portal administrator user name>
  Specify the user name of a portal member assigned to the Esri-defined Administrator role.
- PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD = <portal administrator password>
  Specify the password of the portal administrator account.
- PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED = <true | false>
  Set this option to false the first time you populate the file with your administrator password. When you save the file, your password is encrypted and the value for PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED is set to true to indicate the password has been encrypted. If you need to change the password in the future, set PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED = false, provide your new administrator password, and save the file.
- INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES = <true | false>
  If you publish hosted scene layers to your portal and want to include the scene cache data in the backup, set INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES to true. Be aware that, if set to true, all scene cache data is included in the backup, not just the new cache data created since your last backup. If you know that no new scene caches have been created since your last backup or if you do not publish scenes to your portal, you can set INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES to false.
In this example, the portal at URL https://portalhostname.domain.com:7443/arcgis, plus the services and settings of its hosting and federated servers, and the hosted feature layer data stored in ArcGIS Data Store will be output to a backup file on \\mybuserver\\wgbackups. Scene layer caches from ArcGIS Data Store will not be included because INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES is set to false.
```
SHARED_LOCATION = \\\\mybuserver\\wgbackups
PORTAL_ADMIN_URL = https://portalhostname.domain.com:7443/arcgis
PORTAL_ADMIN_USERNAME = admin
PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD = Th3.Ad.Pass
PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED = false
INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES = false
```
Save the properties file.
The PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD value will be encrypted in the file and PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED is set to true once you run the webgisdr utility with this file.
Open a command window, change directories to the location of the webgisdr utility, and run the utility with the export option.
In this example, the properties file (mywebgis.properties) was saved in the user-created folder C:\propfiles.
```
webgisdr --export --file C:\propfiles\mywebgis.properties
```

A file is created in the location you specified for the SHARED_LOCATION in the properties file. The file name is <timestamp>.webgissite.zip.

Move the export file

If the export file was created in a location that the standby deployment cannot access, move the backup file to a location that the machines in your standby deployment can access. Make a copy of the properties file specifically to be used for importing, and update the SHARED_LOCATION value in the new properties file to reflect the new location of the export file. Ensure the machines in the standby deployment can access the copy of the properties file you will use to import the web GIS.

Be sure the domain account that runs the ArcGIS for Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and ArcGIS Data Store has read access to the folder where the backup file is stored.

For the purposes of this workflow example, the copy of the properties file is named toimport.properties.

Install components for standby deployment

Before you import the web GIS for the first time, you need to install and configure all software components (ArcGIS for Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and ArcGIS Data Store) on the standby machines. The standby machines must have the same names as the machines in your primary deployment.

Additional ArcGIS licenses are not required for the standby deployment because it is not actively accessed; you only make it the active deployment if the primary fails.

Import to standby deployment

Once you have an empty deployment on the standby machines, import the content from your primary deployment.

Open a command window on the Portal for ArcGIS machine of the standby deployment, change directories to the location of the webgisdr utility, and run the utility with the import option.
Note that if your standby web GIS deployment contains a primary and secondary portal machine, run the utility on the primary machine.
In this example, the properties file (toimport.properties) was saved in the user-created folder C:\propfiles.
```
webgisdr --import --file C:\propfiles\toimport.properties
```
Note that the property file does not have to be in the same folder you saved it in when first created. If you do move it, specify the new folder location with the --file parameter.

Maintain standby deployment

To minimize data loss, export from the primary and import to the standby deployment as frequently as possible. How often you can do this depends on how long it takes to export and import your deployment, and whether you can script the export and import processes without the need for manual intervention (for example, you may need to physically copy files from one location to another).

Switch to standby when primary fails

As discussed in Disaster recovery and replication, your IT department can bring the standby deployment online if your primary deployment fails.

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