I am a server administrator who is totally new to ArcGIS. I just set up ArcGIS for Server 10.1 SP1 on Windows Server 2008 R2 and am now investigating backup and recovery. There is a section titled "Backing up and restoring your ArcGIS Server site" in ArcGIS Help which basically says that in order to make a backup you need to "delete all machines from your site", taking the site offline, then back up the relevant directories and then run the "create new site" wizard, trying to remember to do it exactly the same way as when you first configured the site.
REALLY?
This can't be serious. I can't imagine anyone making regular backups of their ArcGIS server using such a disruptive, labour-intensive and error-prone method. Maybe if you have a dedicated ArcGIS server administrator who has no other duties - but how many organizations have such a person?
As with all our servers, I configured Tivoli Storage Manager to take nightly backups of the server files. On cursory look, the files in configuration and data directories seem to be there. TSM complained about some files that it couldn't back up because 'the object is in use by another process', but they don't seem very critical to me:
C:\Apps\ArcGIS\Server\geronimo\var\txlog\howl_1.log': the object is in use by another process
C:\Users\arcgis\AppData\Local\Temp\hsperfdata_arcgis\2096': the object is in use by another process
C:\Users\arcgis\AppData\Local\Temp\hsperfdata_arcgis\2160': the object is in use by another process
C:\Users\arcgis\AppData\Local\Temp\hsperfdata_arcgis\2408': the object is in use by another process
C:\Users\arcgis\AppData\Local\Temp\hsperfdata_arcgis\3344': the object is in use by another process
C:\Users\arcgis\AppData\Local\Temp\hsperfdata_arcgis\3624': the object is in use by another process
C:\Users\arcgis\AppData\Local\Temp\hsperfdata_arcgis\3772': the object is in use by another process
C:\Users\arcgis\AppData\Local\Temp\hsperfdata_arcgis\3996': the object is in use by another process
Is such a backup really unusable for recovery?
