How to backup (and restore!) your Media4Display system?

How to backup (and restore!) your Media4Display system?

Backing up Media4Display

In order to keep your Media4Display system running and to make sure that it will keep running even after a minor or major hardware issue, you need to back up your data, configuration and settings.

Backing up your cloud installed Media4Display instance.

Your usual service provider will have the capability to back up the virtual machine where Media4Display is installed. 


Please look up the information for your cloud provider:
  1. Azure: About Azure VM backup - Azure Backup | Microsoft Learn
  2. AWS: Backing up virtual machines - AWS Backup (amazon.com)
If you have set up your instance with Media4Display media files on a separate hard drive, you will have to create a separate job to back up this drive as well.

Some reference information can be found here:
  1. Azure: Back up Azure Managed Disks - Azure Backup | Microsoft Learn
  2. AWS: Amazon EBS snapshots - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Backing up a virtual machine

The easiest way to back up a Media4Display installation will be to install Media4Display on a virtual machine (VM) and to back that VM up on a regular basis.
The tool you will be using will depend on the solution used. We typically advise to use image based backup as usually Media4Display servers are not part of a complex IT architecture (with redundant domain controllers etc.) and can be managed independently.
If you have separated the media files on a separate drive, it is also a good idea to create a task to automatically copy the files onto a remote server (NAS, cloud based replica, etc.)

Backing up from the OS level (file level backup)

First, if you are deploying on a physical machine, the best to avoid having to deal with issues like backing up and restoring all the time is to improve the reliability of your storage by adopting typical hardware level redundancy protocols such as RAID-5 (block-level striping with distributed parity) for your data volume and RAID-1 (mirroring) for your (fast usually SSD) OS disk. Note that it is okay to install Media4Display and using a storage area on a NAS. Evidently, it is also possible to set up your disk using a SAN and deal with redundancy and backup at the SAN layer.

When you are backing files at the OS level, you can often keep the backup files locally for convenience, either on a separate disk or on an external storage device. This is risky of course if the entire system is physically destroyed so it is a good practice to export out the backup data to a secondary system when possible in a separate physical location. For example you can copy files into a local NAS and have maintenance task to synchronize the NAS files with a remote FTP server or even a different NAS in a different physical location.

When backing up the system at the file level, there are 2 main different elements to back up: the media items/media files and the configuration information held by Media4Display. Let's start with the latter.

Backing up the configuration, settings and general data kept by Media4Display

The majority of the data (including all metadata of all media items, sequences, schedules, programs, player configurations, player metadata, system settings etc.) in Media4Display is kept within the Microsoft SQL Server.
There are usually two ways to backup and restore this data.
  1. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio:  A detailed guide on how to use Microsoft SQL Server is outside the scope of this document. However for manual backup (recommended before major software upgrade), you can use Microsoft SQL Server Management studio and use the Task/Backup on the MContactServer database that is used by Media4Display to store its information. If you need to automate the backup, you can use any free or commercial software that is specialized in this kind of tasks.

    Do not forget to add a backup destination other else you will get errors.



  2. The Telelogos EXPORT/IMPORT tool:
    1. In your Media4Display program files , you will find typically in the following folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Telelogos\MediaContact Server\Bin), the expimptool.exe that is dedicated to exporting and importing data for Telelogos products. 
    2. After pressing Next> you will have the possibility to change the connection string to your SQL Server (no change is usually needed at this stage).
    3. Going forward, you can select where the export file will be emitted.
    4. Finally you can select which data will be exported.
      Note that you need to select the Media4Display definition tables.
      Also if you want to keep logs (Histories) you will need to select these as well.
    5. Finally, the system will export the data into the selected file:
    6. The data can later be reimported in the same way it was exported.
Let's proceed with backing up the actual media files.

Backing up media files

Note: Configuration and settings will usually only take a few seconds and the resulting backup data will be lightweight. This is a different story for media files as without regular curation a media item database can have hundreds or thousands of items and weight multiple hundreds of gigabytes. We recommend that the media database is regularly cleaned as part of the maintenance process and that unused data is removed from the server.

As part of a file based back up of media items, there are a couple of ways that can be used to backup these essential files:
  1. Use a cloud based backup file replication service: Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Zoho Workdrive, Dropbox, Box... There are plenty of good options. Make sure that you set up the system to enable recovery of deleted files.
    The advantage of this method is that it also allows team members to see and (with some integration even modify!) the content of the media folder without having to log into the Content Manager.
  2. Use a file based backup replication software: there are plenty of free and commercial software making it possible to back up (recursively) a folder of files with a specific backup strategy.
  3. Use Telelogos existing MediaContact synchronization facility to copy the media files onto a secondary server on the network.
    1. For this you need to create a new process within MediaContact (in the Processes area, right click and select New)
    2. You need to create a new process as a "Server triggered" process and give it a name, since it is not a process to run on the clients, there is no population fill or connection to selection. Just press Finish.
    3. Right click on the root of the task tree and select Backup > Server
    4. Give a name to your task and move to the Steps 
    5. Add a new step: select the source as the Media4Display folder and the destination your external storage or NAS 
    6. Activate the Process by right-click and select the Activate menu
    7. Now the Process can be executed manually, you can use the Execute Process menu in the same contextual menu to test your backup process.
    8. Once you are happy that the process is working correctly, you can automate schedule execution by going into the Schedule tab of the process and modify the schedule to be periodic (and e.g. Daily at 1 AM)
    9. Don't forget to re-activate the process. Every time you make a change to a process, the process is "suspended" and then needs to be reactivated.

Practice your backups

Once you have managed to create a consistent backup system, don't forget to practice your backups and verify that they are working as expected. Similarly, it is good practice to attempt to restore such backups onto a temporary server (VM or temporary Pay-as-you-go cloud server).



    • Related Articles

    • The thumbnails on the server are not being created anymore

      When the thumbnails on the server don't get created anymore it is because one of the following reasons: The server needs to install Media Foundation feature:  SOLUTION: install the Media Foundation feature in Windows server The installation didn't ...

    • Media4Display and MediaContact variables and metadata

      List of variables used in MediaContact and Media4Display Company variables %COMPANY%: User's company identifier. %AliasServerCompany=AliasCompany%: Company Alias value (where AliasCompany refers to a Company Alias) %T_COMPANIES.property%: a user's ...

    • Extract Android Logs

      Step 1: Install ADB tools Download the ADB Tools Go to the Android SDK Platform Tools page and download the latest version of the SDK Platform Tools: https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/platform-tools Extract the ZIP File Extract the ...

    • How to visualize Room Calendar in O365

      Here are the steps to visualize a room (resource) calendar booking in O365. Open O365 Calendar view and click Add calendar on the left menu Click Add from directory, select the account to use for searching (usually your own account), enter the room ...

    • How to retrieve Media4Display diagnostic logs using MediaContact on Android

      The easiest way to retrieve Media4Display diagnostic logs on Android is simply to create a process in MediaContact. In a custom process folder, create a new process. Process trigger initiative: Server Population: create and select the population you ...