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Run backup and restore utilities on AWS

ArcGIS Server and Portal for ArcGIS include utilities that you can use to create backups and restore your sites on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

ArcGIS Enterprise deployments

If you deployed ArcGIS Enterprise on AWS, you can use the webgisdr utility installed with Portal for ArcGIS to create a backup of your deployment. At 10.5, you can configure the properties file used with the webgisdr utility to back up your Portal for ArcGIS content directory to an Amazon simple storage service (S3) bucket you create before running the utility.

You can configure the properties file used with the webgisdr utility so that it sends all the backup files it generates to an Amazon S3 bucket you create before running the utility.

Note:

When an EC2 instance is in a VPC endpoint, it can only read and write to S3 buckets in the AWS region it's deployed in. If you want to use the webgisdr tool to back up your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, and you want to store the backup content in an S3 bucket that's in a different region from the EC2 instance, delete the VPC endpoint associated with the EC2 instance.

See Create an ArcGIS Enterprise backup in the Portal for ArcGIS Administrator Guide for information on running webgisdr.

ArcGIS Server sites created with Cloud Builder

ArcGIS Server includes backup and restore utilities that preserve properties of your site configuration. If you created the ArcGIS Server site using ArcGIS Server Cloud Builder on Amazon Web Services, you can use these utilities in combination with Cloud Builder backups if you want a basic backup of your site properties that can be stored in a different physical location and restored without site downtime.

When you run the ArcGIS Server backup and restore utilities on your AWS site, make sure to do the following:

  • When you provide the utility parameters, use the public DNS or LOCALHOST in the server URL; do not use the Elastic Load Balancer name.
  • Copy the backup file .agssite to a location apart from the EC2 instance, such as Amazon S3. This allows you to recover your site configuration even if you lose the original EC2 instances or your Cloud Builder backup.
  • After running the restore utility, use Cloud Builder to stop your site, and start it again. This restores your original number of instances to the site.

You may see error messages related to the Elastic Load Balancer when you run the restore utility. This is expected.