[00:00] Creating a backup of your Ignition Gateway is super easy. In most instances, the gateway backup process takes about a minute and backs up everything you find in the ignition gateway. This includes your projects gateway settings, authentication profiles, tags, database connections, OPC and device connections, alarm pipelines, scripts, sequential function charts, reports and the image management library. Perspective custom assets, such as fonts, icons and themes are also included in a gateway backup. The only data not included in a gateway backup is the data stored in other pieces of software that ignition interacts with. This includes things like SQL databases and PLC programs for example. It is also important to note that items manually added to the ignition installation directory are also not included in a gateway backup and must be backed up separately. Now, how do I take an ignition gateway backup?

[01:06] There are actually a few ways to do this. The easiest is through the ignition gateway web interface where I am currently. All I have to do is head to the configure page select the backup and restore menu and press the big blue button with a text, download backup. I will press it, and as you can see a file download is initiated, that's it. Once that file downloads, you will have a gateway backup in the form of a single GWBK file. This file will allow you to restore a copy of this ignition gateway into any other ignition server. This is very useful for things like cloning and ignition server, but most importantly you have a way to back up all of your ignition resources. For ignition gateways that are in constant development, it is often useful to have ignition take gateway backups automatically for you on a schedule. Luckily Ignition is capable of taking schedule gateway backups.

[02:01] While still on the configure tab, if I head over to the gateway settings menu, I can scroll down and eventually find this schedule backup settings. Once enabled I'm able to choose a gateway backup file destination where all of my scheduled gateway backups will be saved to. I am also able to define my gateway backup schedule using a Unix crontab style scheduling string. By default schedule backups are taken every day at 1:15 AM. Finally, we can define a backup file retention count. This tells the system how many backup files to keep. Once this retention count is reached, the oldest gateway backup is pruned to make room for any new backup files. Ignition is also able to take gateway backups through its gateway command line utility. The gateway command line utility, provides a list of commands you can use to perform specific functions in an ignition gateway, invoking the gateway command utility or GWCMD for short can only be done for my command line.

[00:00] [03:04] So you will need to use a command line interface like terminal, PowerShell, command prompt, et cetera. I am currently on a window system. So let me grab my command prompt. With my command prompt open, I will need to navigate to the root directory of my ignition installation. I will do so by going CD followed by the path to my ignition installations root directory which I will paste from my clipboard here. Now that I am in my installations root directory I will type "GWCMD -b" which is the command to take a gateway back up and I will follow it with a path to the directory I want my gateway backup file to be stored. In my case, I want it to go to my documents, so I will go users, my username, documents, followed by my backup files name which I will name my backup and I will press enter.

[04:03] After a few seconds, you will see a message telling you the gateway backup succeeded. As a side note, since we are asking the system to write a gateway backup file to my documents folder the command prompt will have to be ran with administrative privileges. This is true regardless of the command line interface you are using. As you can see there are various ways to trigger Ignition to take a gateway backup. Ultimately, any way you choose will lead to a way for you to get a copy of your entire gateway in its current state.