DCME key disaster recovery

[TheCoffeeDude]

I just underwent an exercise of recovering my controller in the event of a catastrophic failure. One of the steps is to recover the DCME keys (DCM Encryption keys) - which is documented here: https://help.alteryx.com/20221/en/server/install/server-host-recovery-guide/dcme-keys-to-backup.html...

This DCME recovery needs to be revisited. This document assumes that the previous controller is running. In a disaster recovery situation, this is not possible. What, if any, can be done to recover the DCME keys if the host has is completely irrecoverable?

For context, having an irrecoverable host has happened. Complete hard drive failure (showing my age), nuked virtual machine and its backups (no one paid attention to the notices that the data center was shutting down), and fire.

[fmvizcaino]

Hi @TheCoffeeDude ,

Totally agree with you. There should be an update to the Alteryx Server backup process including backing up the controller token and everything else that is missing there and I forgot 😅

https://knowledge.alteryx.com/index/s/article/Alteryx-Server-Backup-Recovery-Part-2-Procedures-15834...

I think you could add this as an idea. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Ideas/idb-p/server-ideas

A small addition to the backups is that they should be in a file server outside the server machine, preferably in a different cloud provider.

Best,

Fernando Vizcaino

[TheCoffeeDude]

Good call out to make sure the critical files and the token are backed up. I have those three files stored on several systems both on and offsite. MongoDB, I'm not too worried about - thank you MongoDB Atlas.

I'll submit the idea. I'm hoping that'll gain traction ASAP.

[jguerrero]

Thank for submitting the idea, @TheCoffeeDude!. Here is the idea for reference and for other folks to vote on: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Ideas/DCME-key-disaster-recovery/idi-p/1210374