Configure disaster recovery for ArcGIS Enterprise—Portal for ArcGIS

You can replicate your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment 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 clients.

Export the components of your primary ArcGIS Enterprise deployment to a compressed file using the webgisdr tool, and use the compressed file to set up and maintain the standby deployment.

Note:

The webgisdr utility does not move map service cache tiles. If you includes map service or hosted tile layer caches used by the GIS Server site in your deployment, 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.
Multiple ArcGIS Server clusters are not supported when using the webgisdr tool to replicate ArcGIS Enterprise to a disconnected standby deployment.
All machines in both deployments must use the same operating system. For example, your primary deployment cannot be on Windows machines and your standby be on Linux.

Export ArcGIS Enterprise

Use the webgisdr utility with the export operation and a properties file to export your primary ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. The exported file includes your portal, hosting server, relational and tile cache data stores, and federated servers. The file size and time it takes to create it vary 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 ArcGIS Server machines 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 ArcGIS Enterprise deployment 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.
The ArcGIS Data Store relational data store in your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment must have point-in-time recovery enabled.

Follow these steps to export your primary ArcGIS Enterprise 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 a temporary copy of the backup files for ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and ArcGIS Data Store. The domain account that runs the ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and ArcGIS Data Store service and the account running the webgisdr utility 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 ArcGIS Data Store backup file can be especially large.
  Legacy:
  At Portal for ArcGIS 10.4, this property was SHARED_FOLDER.
- BACKUP_STORE_PROVIDER = {FileSystem | AmazonS3}
  This property is new in 10.5.1. If you want to store your ArcGIS Enterprise backup in a file share location on premises, specify FileSystem, and the webgisdr utility will store your backup files in the file share you specify for BACKUP_LOCATION.
  If you want to store your ArcGIS Enterprise backups in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket, create an S3 bucket specifically for storing backup files generated by the webgisdr utility, and update the S3 properties with the information needed to access your bucket.
- BACKUP_LOCATION = <location of on-premises backup file>
  This property is new at 10.5.1. If you set BACKUP_STORE_PROVIDER = FileSystem, backup files are initially stored in the SHARED_LOCATION but are then copied to the BACKUP_LOCATION Be sure the location is large enough to hold the backup file. Although the file is compressed, it can be quite large depending on the amount and type of data you have. The account that runs the webgisdr utility must have write access to the BACKUP_LOCATION.
- 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, where portalhostname.domain.com is the fully qualified name of the machine where Portal for ArcGIS is installed.
- 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.
- BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = <full | incremental>
  If you only create full backups, you can set this property to full. To decrease the size of backups, though, you can create two different properties files—one with BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = full, which you would use occasionally to create full backups, and one with BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = incremental to generate incremental backups between full backups. Each incremental backup contains all changes since the last full backup.
  If you do not set BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE in the properties file, full backups are created by default.
- If your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment is running on AWS and your portal content directory is stored in Amazon S3, you need a backup bucket for the content directory. Create a backup bucket in S3 and set PORTAL_BACKUP_S3_BUCKET in the properties file to the name of the bucket and set PORTAL_BACKUP_S3_REGION to the AWS region in which you created the S3 bucket. See Configure highly available ArcGIS Enterprise with AWS storage services in the ArcGIS Enterprise on Amazon Web Services help for more information on this type of implementation.
  Legacy:
  Prior to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.5.1, the PORTAL_BACKUP_S3_BUCKET property was BACKUP_BUCKET_NAME.
- Beginning with 10.5.1 ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Microsoft Azure, you can store your portal content directory in an Azure Blob storage container. To use the webgisdr utility to create a backup of this deployment, you must set the following properties (new at 10.5.1):
  - PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_NAME = <Azure storage account>
    Set PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_NAME to the Azure Blob storage account name.
    Tip:
    You specified this storage account name when you chose to Use Azure Cloud Storage for the configuration and content store on the Deployment Options panel of Cloud Builder.
  - PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY = <account key>
    Set PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY to the account key associated with your Azure Blob storage account.
  - PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY_ENCRYPTED = false
    Set PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY_ENCRYPTED to false when you first add the PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY value. When you save the webgisdr.properties file, the key will be encrypted and the tool will set PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY to true.
  - PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_ENDPOINT = <Blob storage account endpoint>
    Specify the Blob service storage account endpoint.
  - PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ENDPOINT_URL = <Blob service URL>
    Specify the Blob service endpoint URL. This URL is in the format https://<PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_NAME>.<PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_ENDPOINT>/<container name>.
- If you set BACKUP_STORE_PROVIDER to AmazonS3, provide information for the following properties (new at 10.5.1):
  - S3_ACCESSKEY= <The access key for your AWS account>
    You only need to set this if you set S3_CREDENTIAL_TYPE=accessKeys. The IAM user represented by this access key must have read and write access to the S3 bucket you specify with the S3_BUCKET property.
  - S3_SECRETKEY= <The secret key for your AWS account>
    Specify the secret key associated with the access key for your AWS account. This is used only if you set S3_CREDENTIAL_TYPE to accessKeys.
  - S3_ENCRYPTED = false
    Leave this set to false. If you have S3_CREDENTIAL_TYPE set to accessKeys when you run the webgisdr utility, the utility will encrypt the access key and secret key and set S3_ENCRYPTED to the encrypted access key value.
  - S3_BUCKET= <name of the S3 bucket>
    This is the name of the Amazon S3 bucket in which you want to store your ArcGIS Enterprise backup file.
  - S3_CREDENTIAL_TYPE= <IAMRole | accessKeys
    Set S3_CREDENTIAL_TYPE to IAMRole if you will access the S3_BUCKET using an AWS IAM role. Set it to accessKeys if you will access the S3_BUCKET using an AWS IAM user via an access key. The IAM role or user must have read and write access to the S3 bucket you specify with the S3_BUCKET property.
  - S3_REGION= <AWS region in which you created the S3 bucket>
  - S3_BACKUP_NAME = <backup file name>
    This property is only used when you restore an ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. Specify the name of the backup file you want to restore. If you do not specify a backup file name, the latest backup file is restored.
In this example, a full backup of 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 the ArcGIS Data Store relational data store will be initially output to files in \\\\myserver\\tempbackups. The separate files will be compressed into a single backup file (entbackup) and copied to \\mybuserver\\wgbackups. Scene layer caches from the ArcGIS Data Store tile cache data store will not be included because INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES is set to false.
```
BACKUP_STORE_PROVIDER = FileSystem
SHARED_LOCATION = \\\\myserver\\tempbackups
BACKUP_LOCATION = \\\\mybuserver\\wgbackups\\entbackup
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
BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = full
```
In this example, a full backup of the portal at URL https://portalonaws.mydomain.com:7443/gis, its content directory (stored in S3 bucket portalcontent), the services and settings of the portal's hosting and federated servers, and the data stored in the relational and tile cache data stores will be output to the S3 bucket entbackups in the AWS region eu-west-1. The backup file name is fullbackup06June. An IAM role is used to access the AWS account.
```
BACKUP_STORE_PROVIDER = AmazonS3
SHARED_LOCATION = \\\\myserver\\tempbackups
BACKUP_LOCATION = \\\\mybuserver\\wgbackups\\entbackupfile
PORTAL_ADMIN_URL = https://portalhostname.mydomain.com:7443/arcgis
PORTAL_ADMIN_USERNAME = entadmin
PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD = p0rtl.a.p
PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED = false
INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES = true
BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = full
PORTAL_BACKUP_S3_BUCKET = portalcontent
S3_BUCKET = entbackups
S3_CREDENTIAL_TYPE = IAMRole
S3_REGION = eu-west-1
S3_BACKUP_NAME = fullbackup06June
```
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.

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 ArcGIS Enterprise.

Be sure the domain account that runs the ArcGIS 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 ArcGIS Enterprise deployment to the standby for the first time, you need to install and configure all software components (ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, ArcGIS Web Adaptor, and ArcGIS Data Store) on the standby machines. The URL used to access the portal (either the load balancer URL or web adaptor URL) and the ArcGIS Server services URL must be the same for the standby deployment as they are for your primary deployment.

For example, if the URL to access the portal on the primary deployment is https://myportalslb.organization.com/portal and the services URL for the GIS Server on the primary deployment is https://myserverslb.organization.com/server, the standby deployment must use the same URLs.

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.

If your primary ArcGIS Enterprise deployment is highly available, the webgisdr tool maintains high-availability settings for the GIS Server site and the ArcGIS Data Store relational and tile cache data stores when you import to the standby deployment. For the portal, the webgisdr tool unregisters the standby portal machine, restores the portal to the primary machine, and reregisters the standby machine when imported.

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 ArcGIS Enterprise 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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