This article is intended for customers that have an on-premise installation of NetX. For hosted sites, please check with your account manager to review backup and archive options.
Backing up NetX
The two key components to backing of the NetX application are the database and the application directory. Ideally, the application should be offline when these two components are backed up to ensure that the data in the database and the application data are in sync. However, in most cases, backing up the application late at night or early morning during off hours should be satisfactory.
In case of emergency, ensure to keep a nightly backup of the database, as well as key NetX configuration files (located in the appFiles/backup directory). The complete list of files in the appFiles/backup directory includes:
- The Autotask configuration file (autoTask.xml)
- Any customized files (from WEB-INF/custom in the web application directory)
- A SQL dump of the database
- The NetX configuration file (exogen-config.xml)
- The NetX license file
- The NetX repurposing engine config (phoenixConfig.xml)
- The Solr index
- Tomcat's configuration file (server.xml)
Even though these nightly backups are being performed by NetX, it's best not to rely on them and to perform a daily full backup of the database and the application directory to an offsite location.
The Database
Backing up the database is usually a simple matter of using a standard data dump utility, such as 'mysqldump' for MySQL. See your database software's documentation for best practices with regards to backup procedures.
Tomcat and the NetX Application
We recommend backing up the entire application directory in order to avoid the necessity of reinstalling the application before restoring from a backup. This will also include vital configuration files and other customized components that might apply to your installation. The <Application Directory>/netx/config folder contains the majority of this critical configuration data.
Asset files
There two locations where NetX stores files used in the DAM. One is the 'repository' directory, which contains the actual asset files used by NetX and the second is the 'appFiles' directory which contains thumbnails, previews, zooms and other auxiliary files. You can identify the locations of these directories by checking the properties image.fileDirectory directory property ('appFiles') and sys.repository_directory ('repository') either in the UI or the application configuration files. For more information on how to check these properties, please see Related Topics at the bottom of this article.
Since the repository contains all of the actual asset files in the DAM, we recommend backing up this directory if possible. At the very least, it should be on a mount point which features fault tolerance such as RAID.
While the content of the 'appFiles' directory can be regenerated by resyncing the repository, this operation is very time consuming and resource intensive, so it is recommended to back up this directory as well for the fastest possible restoration. Since versions are also stored here, the 'appFiles' directory must be backed up to ensure that earlier versions of files are preserved.