You can create backups of your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment using the Web GIS Disaster Recovery (WebGISDR) tool and restore the most recent backup in the event of a failure or corruption. This allows you to recover the portal items, services, and data that existed at the time you created the backup.
The WebGISDR tool is installed to <Portal for ArcGIS installation directory>/tools/webgisdr.
Restoring backups to recover your deployment is a good option if your users will accept some amount of downtime and possible data loss, and your organization does not have the infrastructure or resources to devote to a highly available deployment.
You can also keep backups even if you implement other disaster recovery strategies. They provide extra insurance that you can recover your deployment if your primary strategy fails.
For example, if you maintain a replicated deployment and both your primary and replicated deployments fail at the same time (perhaps they were both housed in a building that lost power), you still have a backup you can restore.
See Backup and restore best practices for more information.
What's included in the backup
Use the WebGISDR tool to export backup files of the following components of your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment:
- Your portal items and settings
- GIS services and settings
- Service webhooks
- The relational data store, tile cache data store, and object store
You can create incremental backups between full backups to reduce the total backup size. See Backup modes for more information on the differences between full and incremental backups.
The backup created with the WebGISDR tool does not include the following:
- Map service cache tiles and hosted tile layer caches—If you have either of these, 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 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 have been built. When you restore the site, move or copy the information back to the original arcgiscache directory.
- Referenced data sources for web services—For file-based data sources, you need to make backup copies of those files. For data stored in a database, use the tools of your database management system to create database backups.
- Spatiotemporal big data store and graph store backups—If you have any of these ArcGIS Data Store types registered with the hosting server, create backups of each using the ArcGIS Data Store backupdatastore utility.
- Federated ArcGIS Mission Server or ArcGIS Notebook Server sites—If you have either of these, create backups by following the instructions in the ArcGIS Mission Server documentation and the ArcGIS Notebook Server documentation. To restore them using the WebGISDR tool, follow the instructions in Restore ArcGIS Enterprise.
- ArcGIS GeoEvent Server site configuration—Follow the instructions in the ArcGIS GeoEvent Server documentation to create a backup of it.
Note:
To create incremental backups with the WebGISDR tool, you must enable point-in-time recovery, or the utility will fail.
Also note that the WebGISDR tool must have access to at least one of the machines in each federated server site through the ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory URL and the primary data store to succeed. To determine whether the URL is accessible, open the ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory from a browser on the machine where you will run the WebGISDR tool.
Settings that must match between environments
When restoring your organization using the WebGISDR tool, there are certain items and settings that must be identical in the environment where the backup is taken and the environment where it is restored.
The following must match in source and target environments:
- Version of Portal for ArcGIS and federated ArcGIS Server sites
- Organization URL and federated server site service URLs
- Registered data stores
- The registered ArcGIS Data Store should match what is included in the backup. For example, if the relational and object stores are included, those should also be registered in the target environment.
- User managed data stores will be overwritten in the target environment from the backup, so should be accessible from both deployments. See Data dependencies when restoring for more information.
- Administrator account credentials for the webgisdr.properties file
- Portal content directory location type (file system, Azure Blob, AWS S3)
It is supported to back up deployments with components whose versions do not match, as long as when you restore, the components match their versions at the time of the backup. For example, your organization's base deployment may be at 11.3 with a federated server site at 11.1. You can restore from a backup taken of this deployment as long as the version for each component remains the same. If you create a backup then upgrade that server to 11.3, restoring from the backup is not supported.
The following can differ between source and target environments, as they are retained from the target environment:
- ArcGIS Server site configuration store and directory paths
- Portal content directory path or bucket
- Security information (LDAP URLs, proxy information)
- Site footprint (single machine vs. multiple machines)
- Machine names (FQDNs)
- Administrative URLs for federated ArcGIS Server sites
- The private portal URL
Backup modes
You can create different types of backups with the WebGISDR tool using the following backup modes:
Backup
The backup mode is intended to back up the state of the organization, including the portal content, published services, the relational data store, and the tile cache data store if you specified it in the properties file. This also includes any data store references registered as portal items or directly through the ArcGIS Server Manager. You cannot use backup mode to back up any of your referenced data unless the data was copied to the site as part of the publishing process.
Full
The full mode works similarly to the backup mode and includes the same content. It is intended to facilitate a combined full and incremental backup schedule and remove the transaction log limit to allow for incremental backup and recovery. If you decide not to use incremental mode as part of your backup strategy, you must use backup mode instead.
Incremental
The incremental mode contains a collection of changes that occurred since the last full backup. It is especially useful in geographic replication, where shorter backup and restore times are advantageous for keeping the deployments in close synchronization. The incremental mode backup file only includes changes to the portal content, published services, data copied to the federated server sites, the relational data store, and the tile cache data store if you specified it in the properties file. If a new data store is registered with the ArcGIS Server site or an existing connecting string is updated, a backup using the full mode and a subsequent restore is required before you can continue with replication using the incremental mode.
Note:
To create or restore incremental backups, ArcGIS Data Store must be configured to automatically create backups of relational data stores.
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 run on Microsoft Windows machines is as follows:
webgisdr.bat --{export | import | configuration} --file <properties file location> [--output <output file location>]The syntax to run the tool on Linux machines is the same except the utility is a .sh file instead of a .bat file.
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. For more information, see WebGISDR tool output file. |
Networking requirements
For the WebGISDR tool to function, it needs access to specific URLs that are part of your deployment and connect directly to the component that is being backed up. Depending on your configuration, they may not match the URLs used to configure the ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, such as the privatePortalURL property in the portal, or the URLs used to federate the portal and server.
Review the following to understand the requests the WebGISDR tool makes so you can ensure that the necessary URLs are accessible for each component:
- Portal for ArcGIS—The tool uses the PORTAL_ADMIN_URL property to connect to the portal to determine the primary portal machine name. The backup or restore operation uses the machine identified. If Portal for ArcGIS is running on a machine with the fully qualified domain name portal.domain.com, ensure that the tool can reach https://portal.domain.com:7443/arcgis. This also applies to any other Portal for ArcGIS machines if the deployment is highly available.
- ArcGIS Server—The PORTAL_ADMIN_URL property also is used to determine the admin URLs for federated servers. The tool uses these admin URLs to find a machine that is accessible and available, so ensure that at least one ArcGIS Server machine in each federated server site is accessible. If ArcGIS Server is running on a machine with the fully qualified domain name server.domain.com, the tool must be able to reach https://server.domain.com:6443/arcgis. This also applies to any other machine that's part of that site.
- ArcGIS Data Store—The tool also uses the admin URLs to find the primary relational and optional tile cache data store. Ensure that any ArcGIS Data Store machine registered to the hosting server site is accessible. If ArcGIS Data Store is running on a machine with the fully qualified domain name datastore.domain.com, the WebGISDR tool must be able to access ArcGIS Data Store's web server that runs on port 2443.