Move articy:server to another machine

Depending on your configuration there may be some points to skip or file-paths to change.

On the old machine:

• Ensure that all users have unclaimed all their partitions.
• Log in to the server management and unregister your license.
• Stop the articy:server X Windows service.
• Go to the articy:server installation directory and make a full backup of the folder called “db”. This folder contains the user/project meta data database and the repository of the internal SVN server with project data (if you use that).
• If you have changed articyserver.cfg or clientsettings.xml in the server directory, you should also backup those files.

On the new machine:

• Install articy:server X.
• Stop the articy:server X Windows service.
• If you used clientsettings.xml, replace the file with the one from the old machine.
• If you used articyserver.cfg replace or merge the file with the one from the old machine. (Depending on installation paths you might need to modify/merge the file and cannot simply replace it)
• Delete the “db” directory and completely replace it with the backup from the old machine.
• Start the articy:server X Windows service.
• Log in as ServerAdmin (using your current password from the old machine).
• Register your license key on the new machine.
• You should now be able to see all your projects and users.
• If either the articy:server or the internal SVN is externally exposed remember to update the firewall rules to route incoming data to the new machine. (The windows firewall on the new machine has already incoming rules created from the installer)
• If you do not use the internal SVN and the SVN server has not moved you should be fine now.
• If you use the internal SVN and do not expose it externally, let your users remove their project folder and open the desired project. This is required since SVN working copies remember the servers they got the data from. (Experienced users can use the svn relocate command instead, Tortoise SVN is a good UI tool for doing so)
• By default the internal SVN reports the local machine name and the domain of the server as its full qualified base URL. If you require to have another name you should use the -svn.machinename <internal SVN Domain> switch in the articyserver.cfg. Ensure that this name is properly resolved to the right machine.

Backup / Restore articy:server

Depending on your configuration there may be some points to skip or file-paths to change.

Backup (offline, server stopped)

• All users should have unclaimed all their partitions, to ensure the server data is up-to-date.
• If you do not have a backup solution that handles open files you need to stop the articy:server X Windows service.
• Go to the articy:server installation directory and make a full backup of the folder called “db”.
• This folder contains the user/project meta data database (articyserver.db) and the repository of the internal SVN server with project data. (If you use the internal SVN, in case of Perforce refer to the backup procedure of Perforce)
• You might backup the logs folder if you like to preserve them, but that purely optional.
• If you have changed articyserver.cfg or clientsettings.xml in the server directory, you should also backup those files too.
• Restart the articy:server service if you previously stopped it.

Backup (online, server running)

• Make a copy of the db\articyserver.db file (e.g. to db\articyserver.db.bak) since this file is used and locked for access.
• Use 7-ZIP or similar to create an archive of your complete server installation directory, which also includes the internalSVN repository data if you don't use a custom setup here. For 7-Zip the command line could be something like this (log files are excluded from backup)
  

  7z.exe a D:\Backups\ArticyServer-Backup.7z "C:\Program Files\articy server X" -xr!articy*.db -xr!*.log -ssw -mx5

Full Restore (including server re-install)

• Install articy:server.
• Stop the articy:server X Windows service.
• If you used clientsettings.xml, replace the file with the one from the backup.
• If you used articyserver.cfg replace or merge the file with the one from the backup. (Depending on installation paths you might need to modify/merge the file and cannot simply replace it)
• Delete the “db” directory and completely replace it with the files from the backup.
• Start the Articy Server Windows service.
• Log in as ServerAdmin (using your current password from the backup).
• Depending where you restore your server, you need to re-register your license. If that is on a different machine and you did not unregister it before you can use our web-form here.
• You should now be able to see all your projects and users.
• If either the articy:server or the internal SVN is externally exposed remember to update the firewall rules to route incoming data to the new machine. (The windows firewall on the new machine has already incoming rules created from the installer)
• If you do not use the internal SVN or the SVN server has not moved you should be fine now.
• If you use the internal SVN and do not expose it externally, let your users remove their project folder and open the desired project. This is required since SVN working copies remember the servers they got the data from. This is the easiest way if there are no local changes on the users machine. (Experienced users can use the svn relocate command instead, Tortoise SVN is a good UI tool for doing so)