You may have months or even years of work contained within a database and it is vital that you protect this data sensibly.
On-premise databases
You must back up your on-premise database - that is the database file and the directory containing supporting files (e.g. simulation results and ground model files).
When you are developing a strategy for backing up your databases it is worth doing a quick estimate of how much it will cost you if you do lose data.
For example, if one user is using a database that is backed up daily, it should cost you a maximum of one day to replace the lost information, plus the time lost restoring a previous backup of the database.
SQL Server and Oracle users should speak to their database administrator to ensure that the database is backed up regularly.
Cloud databases
Cloud databases can be backed up and restored using the dedicated
Info360 Model Management web portal. You can access the portal using the Cloud database management option in the FileDatabase management menu.
Local folders
You should not need to back up your Local Folders. The only things you would lose if the folder is destroyed are changes to networks you are currently editing that have not been saved to the database, and local results files.
For cloud databases, your local results will still be available on the cloud so you can download them.
Your on-premise local results can be re-generated by running the simulations again, but remember that re-running simulations takes time. It might be worth copying the results to the server if you want to keep them. This has the added benefit of making them available to other users.
The best option for protecting changes to the network is to copy changes to the database regularly. This has two advantages:
- Your changes are available to other users
- You have more options for going back and branching in another direction if the changes you have made prove to be the wrong ones
Copying databases
Do not copy on-premise databases using Windows Explorer, or the facilities provided by the database server, and then use both the original and copied database. The two databases will have the same Unique Database Identifier and data in the database and local working folder could become corrupted.
Upgrading InfoWorks ICM
When you upgrade to a new version of InfoWorks ICM, the database version may have changed to support new data types or new fields. InfoWorks ICM will, therefore, display a message when the new version is first run, which informs you that the database version has changed and the implications of updating the database to the latest version.