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Restore ArcGIS Enterprise

If part of your ArcGIS Enterprise organization fails, you can restore it using the webgisdr utility and a backup file you previously exported. You need to be aware of the following when restoring ArcGIS Enterprise:

  • Any items or services created since the last export will be lost.
  • Map and tile service caches, referenced data sources for web services, spatiotemporal big data store backup files, and graph store backup files are not included in the backup you created using the webgisdr utility; therefore, those must be restored separately.
  • The ArcGIS Enterprise organization to which you restore must be at the same version it was when you created the backup. Additionally, you must restore to the same type of operating system. For example, you cannot create a backup of an organization on Linux and restore it to Microsoft Windows machines.

When you restore a highly available ArcGIS Enterprise organization, the webgisdr tool maintains high-availability settings for the GIS Server site and the ArcGIS Data Store relational and tile cache data stores. For the portal, the webgisdr tool unregisters the standby portal machine, restores the portal to the primary machine, and reregisters the standby machine.

You can reference the properties file you created for the ArcGIS Enterprise export if you don't need to change any settings. However, if you need to change the backup file location, want to specify a specific backup file, or need to provide different portal administrator credentials, create a new properties file.

If you created incremental backups of your ArcGIS Enterprise organization, you must have the last incremental and the last full backup created before that incremental backup to restore your organization.

Follow these steps to restore your ArcGIS Enterprise organization to the same machines from which you created the backup file (or machines in a standby ArcGIS Enterprise that uses the same ArcGIS Web Adaptor or load balancer URL and ArcGIS Server sites that have the same services URL as your primary organization):

  1. By default, the webgisdr tool restores the most recent backup file. To restore an earlier file than the most recent backup, you need to update the BACKUP_LOCATION path in the properties file. For example, to restore backup file Sep-08-2015_17-10-44.webgissite from C:\temp, set BACKUP_LOCATION = C:\temp\Sep-08-2015_17-10-44.webgissite.

    When you restore, you can edit the same properties file you used when you created your backup file, but then you must remember to change the BACKUP_LOCATION value in this file to the backup location before you create the next backup. To avoid this, make a copy of the properties file specific for the import operation. For the purposes of this example, a copy of the file named toimport.properties is created and altered.

    Ensure that the domain account that runs the webgisdr tool has at least read access to the BACKUP_LOCATION and write access to the SHARED_LOCATION. Also be sure that the domain account that runs ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and ArcGIS Data Store has read access to the SHARED_LOCATION.

    In this example, the webgisdr tool will connect to the portal at URL https://portalhostname.domain.com:7443/arcgis and restore the latest backup stored in \\mybuserver\wgbackups\entbackup. The DR tool will extract the component backups to \myserver\tempbackups and restore the ArcGIS Data Store, all federated servers and the hosting server, and the portal using their respective backups. Ensure that all components have at least read access to the path specified by the SHARED_LOCATION property.

    
    PORTAL_ADMIN_URL = https://portalhostname.domain.com:7443/arcgis
    PORTAL_ADMIN_USERNAME = admin
    PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD = Th3.Ad.Pass
    PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED = false
    
    BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = backup
    SHARED_LOCATION = \\\\myserver\\tempbackups
    INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES = false
    
    BACKUP_STORE_PROVIDER = FileSystem
    BACKUP_LOCATION = \\\\mybuserver\\wgbackups\\entbackup

    In this example, the webgisdr tool will connect to the portal at URL https://portalonaws.mydomain.com:7443/arcgis and restore the fullbackup06June backup specified by the S3_BACKUP_NAME property from the entbackups bucket. The backup will be downloaded to \\fileserver\backups, and the following components will be restored in sequence using their respective backups: the ArcGIS Data Store, all federated servers and the hosting server, and the portal. The DR tool will use the IAMRole configured with the instance it's running on to download the backup, but it can also be configured to use access keys instead. Ensure that all components have at least read access to the path specified by the SHARED_LOCATION property. The portal content will be restored from the contentbackups bucket. If the backup bucket is in a different region than the target portal, ensure that there is no VPC endpoint configured, which prevents the portal from making outbound requests to restore the content.

    
    PORTAL_ADMIN_URL = https://portalonaws.mydomain.com:7443/arcgis
    PORTAL_ADMIN_USERNAME = entadmin
    PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD = p0rtl.a.p
    PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD_ENCRYPTED = false
    
    BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = backup
    SHARED_LOCATION = \\\\fileserver\\backups
    INCLUDE_SCENE_TILE_CACHES = true
    BACKUP_STORE_PROVIDER = AmazonS3
    
    S3_BUCKET = entbackups
    S3_CREDENTIAL_TYPE = IAMRole
    S3_REGION = eu-west-1
    S3_BACKUP_NAME = fullbackup06June
    
    PORTAL_BACKUP_S3_BUCKET = contentbackups
    PORTAL_BACKUP_S3_REGION =eu-west-1

    In this example, the webgisdr tool will connect to the portal at URL https://portalonazure.domain.com:7443/arcgis and restore the latest backup from the drbackups container in the entbackups storage account. The backup will be downloaded to \\fileserver\backups and the following components will be restored in sequence using their respective backups: the ArcGIS Data Store, all federated servers and the hosting server, and the portal. Ensure that all components have at least read access to the path specified by the SHARED_LOCATION property. The portal content will be restored from the content in the contentbackups container in the entbackups storage account.

    
    PORTAL_ADMIN_URL = https://portalonazure.domain.com:7443/arcgis
    PORTAL_ADMIN_USERNAME = entadmin
    PORTAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD = p0rtl.a.p
    
    BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = backup
    SHARED_LOCATION = \\\\fileserver\\backups
    BACKUP_STORE_PROVIDER = AzureBlob
    
    AZURE_BLOB_ACCOUNT_NAME = entbackups
    AZURE_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY = <key>
    AZURE_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY_ENCRYPTED =false
    AZURE_BLOB_ACCOUNT_ENDPOINT_SUFFIX = core.windows.net
    AZURE_BLOB_CONTAINER_NAME = drbackups
    
    PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_NAME = entbackups
    PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY = <key>
    PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY_ENCRYPTED = false
    PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_ACCOUNT_ENDPOINT_SUFFIX = core.windows.net
    PORTAL_BACKUP_BLOB_CONTAINER_NAME = contentbackups
  2. Open a command window on the portal machine, change directories to the location of the webgisdr utility, and run the utility with the import option.

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

    The syntax for the webgisdr utility is as follows:

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

    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.

    Note:

    If the tool appears to stall while running, ensure the command prompt is not in QuickEdit mode. See Common problems and solutions for more information.

  3. If your organization includes map service or hosted tile layer caches, manually move the backup copies you made, and place the files in the original arcgiscache directory.
  4. If your organization includes a spatiotemporal big data store or graph store, use the ArcGIS Data Store restoredatastore utility to restore a backup of it.
  5. If you had file-based data stored on the same machine as one of your ArcGIS Enterprise components, and that machine failed, restore your backup copies to the same path on the new machine.

    For example, if you had a folder containing file geodatabases and shapefiles on one of your ArcGIS GIS Server site's machines, and that machine failed, place the backup copy of that folder in the same directory path on the new machine. This is necessary because you registered the file location with the ArcGIS Server site. If the data location changes, the services will not be able to find the data.

  6. If your organization includes ArcGIS Mission Server or ArcGIS Notebook Server sites, restore the sites by following the instructions in the ArcGIS Mission Server documentation and the ArcGIS Notebook Server documentation.
  7. If your organization includes ArcGIS GeoEvent Server, import the configuration to the federated site.