Upgrading to 11.1: What's with the pgdata.12.4 folder on my Data Store Machine?

[jcarlson]

I updated our portal to 11.1 with no significant issues, which was great! However, I noticed that in my Data Store machine's files, there is now a folder called pgdata.12.4 that takes up the same amount of space as my pgdata folder, but the contents of the folder haven't changed since the upgrade took place.

I get the impression that maybe it should have been removed during the upgrade, but I'm not sure.

What is this folder for?

Is it safe to delete it?

[Scott_Tansley · Accepted solution]

Hey, when you upgrade a relational Data Store it doesn't just upgrade the database.  The process 'duplicates' it and then upgrades the duplicate.  This actually gives you a safe rollback, and it's nice to have.

When you are confident that you have a good upgrade and the Data Store is solid then you can use the following tool:

https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/portal/latest/administer/windows/data-store-utility-reference.htm#E...

This will go through and remove any older database relics.

Hope this helps.

[jcarlson]

It does help! Thank you very much! I assumed the safe rollback was what's in the /backup directory, but I can see how this would be good to have for upgrading the postgres version.

[Scott_Tansley]

You would be amazed how many people don't set backup/webgisdr.  This is a last resort, but a good one.  A client recently asked me to help them rollback to yesterday.  They had a four-day backup cycle and it was three days old... 😞  I always take VM snapshots in addition to anything else.  The big thing I've seen at 11.1 is that people are finally using the data store, so it's bigger now than at previous versions, so the issue you raise is becoming more pronounced....