Create an ArcGIS Enterprise backup

You can export the components of your ArcGIS Enterprise organization to a backup file that can later be used to restore your organization 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 the 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.

Use the Web GIS Disaster Recovery (WebGISDR) tool with the export operation and a properties file to create a backup of ArcGIS Enterprise. You can find the tool in the Portal for ArcGIS tools directory. Ensure you meet these criteria when using the tool:

• The shared directory you specify must be large enough to contain the exported file. To estimate how large the file will be, use the WebGISDR tool with the export operation to create a test export of your ArcGIS Enterprise organization. Check the file size, decide how many files you intend to keep in the shared directory, take into account that your organization will grow over time, and size the directory accordingly. Because the file size will likely increase over time, you should continue to monitor the size of these backup files and adjust storage size as needed.
• The account that was used to install each software component in ArcGIS Enterprise must have read and write privileges on the shared directory.
• The backup for each component is placed in a temporary directory on each component's machine before being moved to the shared directory you specify. Therefore, the following directories must be large enough to contain the backup of each component:
  • Portal for ArcGIS: <Portal_content_directory>/temp
  • ArcGIS Server: <ArcGIS_Server_installation_directory>/temp
  • ArcGIS Data Store: <ArcGIS_Data_Store_directory>/temp
• The ArcGIS Data Store relational data store in your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment must have point-in-time recovery enabled if you intend to create incremental backups (BACKUP_RESTORE_MODE = incremental).

Note:

If your portal content is stored in the file system, real-time antivirus scanning can impact the performance of the backup. Consider excluding the portal content directory and your backup SHARED_LOCATION and BACKUP_LOCATION directories from your antivirus scanner.

Create a backup

Before creating a backup of your ArcGIS Enterprise organization, review Back up and restore best practices. Then follow these steps to create a backup:

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 /arcgis/portal/tools/webgisdr by default.

2. Open the copy of the properties file and edit it to include information specific to your site. See WebGISDR tool properties file for more information.
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 tool with this file.

4. Open a command window on the Portal for ArcGIS machine, change the directory to the location of the WebGISDR tool, and run the tool with the export option. See the Runtime arguments section below for more information.

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

5. If your ArcGIS Enterprise organization 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 backup file to restore ArcGIS Enterprise.

Note:

It's recommended that you create backups on a regular basis to guard against significant data loss and reduce downtime. To schedule backups, learn more about automating backup and restore operations.

Runtime arguments

When creating or restoring an ArcGIS Enterprise backup, you will need to update parameters from the command shell on the Portal for ArcGIS machine. The syntax for the WebGISDR tool is as follows:

webgisdr.bat --{export | import | configuration} --file <properties file location> [--output <output file location>]

For information on these parameters, see the following:

Parameter	Description
-e or --export	Creates a backup of the existing organization.
- i or --import	Imports an existing backup to the connected organization. For more information, see Restore ArcGIS Enterprise.
-c or --configuration	Checks the connected organization's configuration and outputs the federated components including the portal, server sites, and relational and tile cache data stores.
-f or --file	Contains the connection details for the organization as well as backup and restore-specific information. For more information, see WebGISDR tool properties file.
(Optional) -o or --output	Creates an output file that can be parsed to help automate validation of successful backups and restores or for administrator review.