How to backup and restore Desktop Historian

Created by Vester Business Support Team, Modified on Wed, 4 Nov, 2020 at 8:16 PM by Vester Business Support Team

Answer / Solution

1. Confirm first that the new Installation of Desktop Historian Can Reach the OPC Servers that your configuration uses. This is to prevent the loss of data which would occur if you stopped the services in the next step and then ran into issues connecting from the new system to your OPC Servers.

Add 1 tag into the configuration for each OPC Server
Check that you are able to collect new data from each data source.
If you are not able to collect data from a data source troubleshoot and resolve before proceeding to minimize data loss.

2. Save Configuration and Data from the Old Installation:

Stop the following services in the services panel. It is important to stop the services so that it can properly close the .dat file that is in use.
- MatrikonOPC Desktop Historian
- MatrikonOPC Desktop Historian - Client
- MatrikonOPC Server for Desktop Historian
Save a backup of the files from C:\Program Files\Matrikon\OPC\Desktop Historian\Database, assuming that you used the default installation path, to a location that can be accessed by the new Historian.
Back up your Historical Data file directory to a location that can be accessed by the new Historian.
- This file path can be found via the configuration panel Desktop > Localhost > OPC Desktop Historian > Options > Data Storage Management > Main Storage > Configure
- The default folder is c:\matrikon data
Copy and paste all the contents from the source ODH folder C:\Program Files\Matrikon\OPC\Desktop Historian\Database to the same destination ODH folder.
Start the ODH services so you can resume collection. That way if you run into issues on the new system and have to do troubleshooting you can migrate the database and data again later.

3. Restore Configuration and Data on New Installation:

Stop the following services in the services panel. It is important to stop the services to ensure that the ECF/ELF files and .dat files from a base installation are not in use so that they can be removed.
- MatrikonOPC Desktop Historian
- MatrikonOPC Desktop Historian - Client
- MatrikonOPC Server for Desktop Historian
Navigate to C:\Program Files\Matrikon\OPC\Desktop Historian\Database assuming you used the default installation path.
Delete all the files in this directory. This is to ensure that the base configuration from install doesn't conflict with the files from the old installation.
Copy and paste the files from where you saved the database folder from the old installation. Note: do not copy and replace the folder as that can change permissions at the folder level.
Remove the .dat files from Historical Data File Directory if any are present.
Copy and paste the .dat files from the backup location into your Historical Data File Directory.
Restart the Services.
Test and Confirm that you are able to read past data and new data from this new Install of Desktop Historian.