Provisioning backup best practices

When performing a provisioning backup that includes a large number of stations, typically more than 100 stations, you might encounter various types of timeout issues before the provisioning job can complete. Here are some best practices for running backups via provisioning.

Station backups may take different amounts of time depending on the size of a station, the network connection between the Supervisor and subordinate station, and the platform the station is running on. Adding all the stations in a large Niagara Network under a single backup station provisioning job may cause connections to time out.

Best practices for provisioning backups

  1. Group the stations based on backup needs and create multiple station backup provisioning jobs. Some stations may require to be backed up at different frequencies and different times of day.

    Using a small number of stations in each provisioning job group instead of a large number of stations increases the likelihood that each job will finish successfully without error, and facilitates troubleshooting in cases where a particular station fails to backup.

  2. When there are multiple station backup provisioning jobs, avoid overlapping their execution times. Set the triggers for backup jobs to execute at different times.