Create a web GIS backup

You can export the components of your web GIS to a backup file that can later be used to restore your deployment in the event of hardware failure or data loss. The file includes your portal items and settings, hosted web layers, federated and hosting server settings, and, if using ArcGIS Data Store, your hosted feature layer data and hosted scene layer caches. The size of the backup file 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. When you back up a deployment that does not contain any data or services, the file that is generated is approximately 380 MB in size. Your file will always be larger than that.

Use the webgisdr utility with the export operation and a properties file to create a backup of your web GIS. You can find the 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 create a backup of your web GIS deployment:

1. 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.

2. 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

3. 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.

4. Open a command window on the Portal for ArcGIS machine, change directory to the location of the webgisdr utility, and run the utility with the export option.

   The default location of the webgisdr utility is C:\Program Files\Portal\tools\webgisdr.

   Syntax for the webgisdr is as follows:

   webgisdr --{export | import} --file <location and name of properties file>

   As mentioned previously, the properties file (mywebgis.properties) was saved in the user-created folder C:\propfiles.

   webgisdr --export --file C:\propfiles\mywebgis.properties

5. If your web GIS includes map service or hosted tile layer caches, manually 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).

   These directories contain the map cache tiles and the tiling scheme file conf.xml. The cache directories may also contain a file geodatabase, status.gdb, which contains information about what tiles were built.

You can use this file to restore your web GIS.