Manually Detaching Missing/Migrated Archive Stores

You may encounter a situation where the SQL Server hosting the Databases for the Archive Stores is lost and irrecoverable, and you need to restore the Archive Store Databases from a backup.

In this situation, Archiver's Configuration UI may freeze and become unresponsive (as the Databases that the Archive Stores point to no longer exist.)  To manually detach the Archive Stores from Archiver and restore functionality, please follow the steps below:

Solution:

1. Take a backup of the Archiver server (or the .../GFI/Archiver/Core/Data/MArcSettings.bin and MArcSettings.xml files at minimum)
2. Stop all GFI Archiver services
   1. This can be done manually or via the script located at .../GFI/Archiver/Tools/Scripts/Stop Services.bat
3. Clear all the entries for the Archive Stores from the MArcSettings.xml file
   1. Delete everything between the <Store> and </Store> tags
4. Clear all the entries for the Indexes from the MArcSettings.xml file
   1. Delete everything between the <Indexes> and </Indexes> tags
5. Clear the Backend DB info from the MArcSettings.xml file
   1. Delete everything between the <BackEndServers> and </BackEndServers> tags
6. Launch Archiver

Testing:

You should now be able to access the Configuration UI within GFI Archiver

If you are recovering from a lost SQL Server and need to reattach the recovered Databases, please follow the steps below

• To restore the Databases from a backup, follow steps 9-12 in How to move an Archiver database to another Microsoft SQL Server
• To begin attaching Archive Stores from the new SQL Server location, follow steps 14 - 16 in How to move an Archiver database to another Microsoft SQL Server
  • You should ensure that the indexes are pointed to the same location as before when reattaching the Archive Stores, otherwise the indexes will be recreated which can take a lot of time and computing resources.