Backing up your DEVOS Content (also applies to DV Express)
When you purchase a DEVOS server as either software to be installed on your own hardware or a hardware server from Discover Video with DEVOS preinstalled, the hardware and all regular maintenance to it and the operating system are the responsibility of the owner of the hardware. That means that any regular backups as a part of ongoing maintenance is up to the the server owner to perform. The simplest way to do this is to make a complete backup image of the server with both the C and D drives. If, however, you wish to only back up the DEVOS content and not the entire operating system and file structure, it is important to know what content needs to be backed up and where to find it. This article will explain this.
The information in this article applies to both DEVOS and DV Express servers.
Necessary Content for a Complete DEVOS Content Backup
There are three types of content that are needed to be backed up in order to be able to restore all content to a DEVOS installation. These include the following:
- Video content (MP4 files)
- Database content (all user account information and content metadata)
- Ancillary content associated with all accounts (channel icons, video thumbnails, other images and documents, etc.)
Video Content
All of the video files in DEVOS are stored as MP4 files with the file extension .mp4. These are stored on the D drive in the media folder (D:\media). There are also some smaller files stored there that help with the delivery of the VOD files, but they are not necessary to be backed up. You could simply back up this entire folder, or you could select just the .mp4 files in this folder to be backed up. The extra files are very small, so backing up the entire folder will not significantly add to the size of your backup.
Database Content
The DEVOS database stores all of the metadata for all of the video content on the server. It also user holds user account information and other data necessary for the organization and full functionality of the site. In order to protect this information and for proprietary reasons, the database is encrypted and can only be accessed by Discover Video technical personnel. The system is designed to back up the full database on a nightly basis, and the server retains the last four (4) days of backup files. This means that if any data corruption occurs, the database can be fully restored if addressed within four days of the corruption event. Since the database is encrypted, however, recovering the database requires assistance from Discover Video support, so it is important to contact support at support@discovervideo,com as soon as possible after any issue is discovered in order to ensure that a full restoration can be performed.
In order to protect the data and ensure it remains completely intact, it is recommended that these backup files be regularly backed up to a location off of the server on another device. These files can be found on the server's C drive in this folder: C:\devosapps\database_backups. These files are compressed and have a file extension of .7z. Each of these files is a complete backup of the entire DEVOS database.
Ancillary Content
There are a number of files that should also be backed up, if a complete restoration of the entire DEVOS site is to be complete. These files include all of the video thumbnail images, channel icon images, other uploaded images, as well as documents and other reference information linked to user accounts and the content that each account owns. Keep in mind that if the video thumbnail images are not backed up, they will actually be recreated automatically by DEVOS once the videos and database are restored, but all other images will not.
The simplest way to back up all of this content is to backup a specific folder on the server's C drive found at C:\inetpub\wwwroot\accounts_media. Backing up this entire folder with all of its subfolders and files will protect all of this ancillary content. Keep in mind that if there are a lot of image files, this backup file could be rather large. For this reason, it may be beneficial to compress the folder into a zip file. All DEVOS servers have a program called 7-Zip that can accomplish this task. Simply click with the right mouse button on the accounts_media folder and select Add to "accounts_media.zip" from the 7-Zip menu. Save the accounts_media.zip file to a location where it can then be backed up.
To restore this folder, extract it first to the server's desktop. Then, double click the file to open it to be sure that there isn't a nested accounts_media folder under the root folder. If there is a subfolder by that name, that is the folder you want to drag and drop to the C:\inetpub\wwwroot folder. If it does not exist, copy the root accounts_media folder to that location. If done correctly, you may encounter a prompt asking whether to overwrite existing files, which should be approved.
Summary: Backup Locations
The following three locations contain all the necessary information for a complete DEVOS server data backup.
- Videos: D:\media
- Database: C:\devosapps\database_backups
- Ancillary Content: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\accounts_media
Using the DEVOS Downloader
Another option for downloading video on-demand files along with their metadata (title, description, etc.) is to have each DEVOS user backup their own video files using the DEVOS Downloader application available for free download from the DEVOS help page. This application allows any user that owns video on-demand files in DEVOS to download each selected video along with an associated XML file with the video's metadata. To use the DEVOS Downloader, the user must first find the account's API key on the Profile page of the Account Settings section of the DEVOS Admin Portal. Then, enter the API key along with the full URL of the DEVOS website into the application and click Get Content. This will show all of the live and on-demand videos in that user's account. The user can then select any or all of the video on-demand files to be downloaded (the application will not allow live videos to be selected). Once all videos are selected, click the Download Checked button to download the files to the location saved in the application's Download Path field.
Keep in mind that the download may take some time as some video files may be rather large. The user must leave the DEVOS Downloader application running until all videos and their associated metadata files have been downloaded. If any of these videos is deleted or removed from the DEVOS server, they can be easily restored by uploading the video file along with its associated metadata file using FTP upload.
Discover Video Support Assistance
All Discover Video clients who have active maintenance agreements are entitled to free assistance with any of the processes explained above. Should assistance be needed with any of these steps or with restoring a DEVOS database, please contact support@discovervideo,com.
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