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Data Backup and Restore

Browser Security Plus stores information like policy details, status of deployed policies, and details about reports in a database. Creating a backup of this database and certain important files like configuration files is necessary to prevent loss of data.

You can backup data automatically, by scheduling a backup using Browser Security Plus, or taking a backup manually. You can also restore this data when required. For example, assume that your hard disk crashes and you have to re-install Browser Security Plus. You can use the last backup you took to restore all the required information. Note that this is possible only if the backup file is stored in a computer other than yours.

Best practises for backup and restore

These are the few best practices recommended for Backup and Restore option.

  1. Make sure that you add the exclusion list for Anti Virus. When directories containing PGSQL data are scanned by anti virus software, they misidentify the file content as spam and will not allow to backup that data. Refer the following links to exclude the Anti Virus.
  2. It is always recommended to schedule the backup during non-office hours.
  3. Make sure that you have a minimum of 5GB space to store the backup data.
  4. Make sure that you specify a Valid destination folder.
  5. Make sure that the remote database if configured, should be running during backup.

Scheduling Data Backup

You can use Browser Security Plus to take a backup of the database regularly. For example, if you want to take a backup of the database every Friday at 5 p.m., you can schedule the same using Browser Security Plus.

To schedule backup of data, follow the steps given below:

  1. Select the Admin tab
  2. Click Database Backup
  3. Specify the time at which you want the backup to be taken, in hour:minute:second (hh:mm:ss) format
  4. Select the number of backup files that you want Browser Security Plus to save
  5. Specify the location where you want the backup files to be stored
  6. Check the "Notify when the database backup fails" checkbox
  7. Specify the email address(es) to which you want an e-mail notification sent, if the database backup fails. Please note that you should have configured your mail server settings for the e-mail notification to be enabled.
  8. Click Save Changes

You have scheduled an automatic data backup to take place automatically at a specified time.

Manual Data Backup and Restore

You can manually backup and restore the database. You can do this using the Backup-Restore Utility GUI.

To open the Backup-Restore Utility GUI, follow the steps given below:

  1. Go to Services.msc and stop ManageEngine Browser Security Plus Server
  2. Open command prompt in elevated mode and navigate to <bsp_installed_dir>\BrowserSecurityPlus\bin
  3. Double-click backuprestore.bat

You've opened the Backup-Restore Utility GUI.

Creating a backup file

  1. On the Backup-Restore Utility GUI, click the Backup tab
  2. Select the location where you want to save the backup file
  3. Click Backup
  4. You can choose to encrypt the backup file by providing a password.

A backup file is created and saved in the specified location. The file will be named using the buildnumber-date-time.zip format. For example, 10042-Oct-25-2018-13-26.zip where 10042 is the build number, Oct 25th 2018 is the date and 13:26 is the time.

Restoring a backup file

  1. On the Backup-Restore Utility GUI, click the Restore tab
  2. Browse and select the required backup file.
  3. Click Restore
  4. In case you have opted for encrypting the backup file, you will have to provide the password for restoring the backup.

This will restore the specified data to Browser Security Plus server.