Back Up an Unclustered Essentials Installation

For information about backing up and restoring a clustered deployment, see Back Up a Clustered Installation.

We recommend that you schedule regular backups of the important data in your Essentials installation. Ideally, backups are a regular, automated process. To restore an old Essentials installation from a backup, you will require the following:

• Your Essentials installation's important data. See Back Up Essentials Data.

• Your important viewer data. See Back Up HTML5 Viewer Data.

• A copy of the Essentials installer that matches the version of the backup.

  If you no longer have access to the Essentials installer required, you can download previous versions of Essentials from the Geocortex Support.

Back Up Essentials Data

For a typical Essentials installation with the generic name Default, you may want to backup the folders at the following locations:

• Sites Folder: The location of your installation's site data.

  C:\Program Files (x86)\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Essentials\Default\REST Elements\Sites

• Geocortex Core Data: The location where log files and other Core components are stored.

  C:\Program Files\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Core\Data

• IIS Virtual Directory: The virtual directory where your Geocortex and viewer folders are located.

  C:\inetpub\wwwroot

• EssentialsWeb.config: Customizes the requirements of your Essentials installation.

  C:\Program Files (x86)\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Essentials\Default\REST Elements\REST\Web.config

  Make note of any changes that have been made to the Essentials Web.config file, because these changes can be lost during an upgrade or reinstall. However, it is not a good idea to replace this file with a copy when restoring from a backup.

Back Up HTML5 Viewer Data

The configuration files for a typical installation of an HTML5 viewer can be found in the following folder:

C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Html5Viewer

Note that the name of the folder, Html5Viewer, may be different if you renamed a viewer or have multiple viewers.

You may have made changes to the following files that require restoration after an upgrade:

• Proxy Configuration: Configures custom proxy rules for your viewer.

  C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Html5Viewer\proxy.config

• Index: The default host file for a viewer.

  C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Html5Viewer\index.html

Your changes to the proxy.config and index.html files can be lost during an upgrade or reinstall. However, it is not a good idea to replace these files with copies when restoring from a backup.

Restore Geocortex Essentials Data from a Backup

The following procedure outlines how to restore Geocortex Essentials data from a backup for a typical installation. If you renamed or relocated folders and files while setting up Essentials, your file names and locations may be different.

To restore Geocortex Essentials data from a backup:

1. Install the version of Essentials that matches the version of the backup.

2. After Geocortex Essentials is installed, run the Post-Installation Configuration application.

3. Stop the Geocortex Core service from your Windows Services list.

4. Delete the Core Data folder at the following location:

   C:\Program Files\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Core\Data

5. Replace the Data folder with your backup Data folder.

6. Restart the Geocortex Core service from your Windows Services list.

7. Copy the contents of your backed up Sites folder to the new installation's Sites folder at the following location:

   C:\Program Files (x86)\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Essentials\Default\REST Elements\Sites

8. Copy the contents of the backed up IIS Virtual Directory (the wwwroot folder) to the IIS Virtual Directory for the new Geocortex Essentials server installation:

   C:\inetpub\wwwroot\

9. Make any required changes to in the REST Web.config file at the following location:

   C:\Program Files (x86)\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Essentials\Default\REST Elements\REST\Web.config

10. Open Essentials Manager and check your sites and viewers to ensure they are working and configured correctly.

Schedule Virtual Machine Backups

If your Essentials server is a virtual machine, you can schedule complete machine snapshots that you can roll back to if issues with your sites arise. See your virtual machine software's documentation for information.