Backing up and restoring content

The most common reasons for you to backup and restore content are when you want to move content from a test environment to a production environment as part of the application development process, or to prepare to upgrade to a new version of the product.

The Configure and manage the system administration capability is required to manage content.

Deployment planning

The process of backing up and restoring content is called a deployment. For security settings to work when you deploy content, the source environment and the target environment must use the same namespaces for policies, users, roles, and groups to work correctly. The Cognos namespace is included when you create a backup. Ensure that the other required namespaces are configured in the target environment before restoring the content.

If the deployment is part of an upgrade, before you create a backup you can run a consistency check to find and fix inconsistencies within the content store or between the content store and external namespaces. You run a consistency check from the Administration console > Configuration > Content administration > New consistency check.

Backing up content

To protect sensitive information, all backups are encrypted. When you restore the content, you must provide the password set when the backup was created.

The backup is saved as an archive file (.zip) in the Deployment files location specified in Cognos Configuration. The default location is install_location\deployment. To deploy the content store in a different instance of IBM® Cognos® Analytics, such as the computer used for the production environment, copy the archive file to the deployment files location on the target computer to make the file available to restore.

A backup includes the following content.

  • public folders
  • packages
  • reports
  • data sources
  • distribution lists and contacts
  • printer configuration
  • access permission settings
  • the Cognos namespace
  • deployment specifications

Personal entries for each user, such as reports and folders from the user's My Content, are not included in the backup.

Restoring content

To restore content, the backup file you want to use must be in the Deployment files location specified in Cognos Configuration. The default location is install_location\deployment. You must provide the password that was set when the backup was created.

When you restore content, the contents of the target content store are removed and replaced by the contents of the source content store.