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Where are workflows saved on the Server of Gallery?

bsharbo
11 - Bolide

Hello everyone. my company has a gallery set up for our workflows.  I have been told that to export a workflow to our gallery we simply hit File > Save as  > My company's gallery (we have a save as location set up to point to the gallery).

 

This seems to work, and when I do this the workflow is moved into my "private studio" when we log into our gallery.  I am curious however, where on the physical server does this workflow get saved at?

 

Aka is it saved in C:\users\AlteryxWorkflow, etc..  I imagine it has to be saved somewhere, however when looking on the actual server machine I can't seem to find any hard-file stored anywhere (i am not sure why).

 

 

IF anyone needsd a screenshot of how I am saving my workflow to our specific gallery please let me know! If anyone has a question on why I think this is very important information please let me know :-)

 

 

12 REPLIES 12
patrick_digan
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

The folder where workflows are saved should be specified in the system settings on the server (System settings>Persistence under the controller section). For our private gallery, we have specified "F:\Alteryx\Service\Persistence\MongoDB_Alteryx10" as the folder to store the workflows, among other things.  If you navitgate to that folder, you will see that the workflows are being saved in file formats that are compatible with MongoDB (and all your workflows are saved together in one file). Your workflow info would be in the Alteryx.Gallery.# file (our # runs from 0 to 1). So when you save your workflow, it essentially takes your workflows and converts/saves it into a format that the Mongo uses. Then when you login to the gallery and run it, it extracts the info from the MongoDB files and converts it back to a workflow and saves it to a specified location. That spot is identified in System settings>General under the worker section. For our private gallery, we have specified "F:\Alteryx\Service\Staging". So if i were to open up my app in the gallery, I could navigate to that folder and subfolder on the server machine and can track down my original yxwz file. 

Nikkath_15
6 - Meteoroid
Patrick, how can i reduce the size of the mongodb_alteryx10 folder?
Is there any possibility to delete any old or unused files under that folder?
What does exactly Alteryx.service# file contains?
patrick_digan
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

@Nikkath_15 I think @KevinP may be better suited to answer your question!  Our mongo files are large, and I'm not entirely sure about the Alteryx.service# file myself. 

Nikkath_15
6 - Meteoroid
Patrick do you know the frequency of creating this alteryx.service# file??
And also Is that depends upon the number of workflows running through gallery in one day??
KevinP
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@Nikkath_15 First I would not recommend deleting any files from the mongodb_alteryx10 folder. This folder contains the server's mongo database and deleting files from here while likely cause irreversible damage. In regard to the Alteryx.service files these files contain the Alteryx Service database. This database will contain copies of any workflows uploaded to scheduler or via Gallery, information on current and completed schedules, and scheduled workflow results. 

 

In regard to reducing space usage there are a few settings/option within the Alteryx System Settings dialog under Persistence > General > Persistence Options. These options will let you define how long to keep some items in the database. The time frames are defined in number of days. Please exercise some caution when adjusting these settings though as they will delete items older then the defined time frame immediately upon applying the settings. Also keep in mind that while these settings will remove items from the database they will not reclaim the disk space currently being used by the database files, As such you will not see any difference in file sizes or disk usage after these changes.

 

This is because of how databases utilize disk space. Think if the database files like a virtual hard drive. Lets say you allocate 1GB of space to your database file. Once that 1GB has been used the database will add another 1GB This continues as more and more things are added. When items are removed though the database just marks that section of the file as being free to be re-used instead of releasing that space back to the operating system. Most databases provide a method or function to reclaim this unused space in your files. For example SQL Server has a shrink operation that can reduce the file size to the amount of space actually being used. Unfortunately, MongoDB doesn't offer any options to perform this type of operation in an easy way. The only method available to recover unused space with MongoDB is to do a full database repair. This process is intensive and can take a very long time to complete. It also requires free space on equal to the current size of the database. As such this usually isn't a viable option especially if you consider that your database may not even have a significant amount of free space that can be released. 

 

Because of this our general recommendation if your server is running low on disk space is to add additional space rather then trying to reduce database usage.

Nikkath_15
6 - Meteoroid
Thanks a lot ! Kevin.

Exactly we are planning to run repair database command to reduce the disk space ours mongo size is 255 GB but disk space is 500GB . Before running repair command we are planning to take the backup of mongo DB just to avoid any corruption of database.Is that a good idea?
KevinP
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@Nikkath_15 I would recommend backing up the database prior to any potentially destructive changes. Running a repair process definitely has the possibility of being destructive so I would recommend making a backup in this situation.

Nikkath_15
6 - Meteoroid

i think db.stats() command will tell us the use of running database repair( ) command. Reclaiming the disk space will be possible

when file size > data size + index size . So i tried running db.stats() through Mongodb command line with admin password but got an error as access denied. In our alteryx server both general and admin password are same.Because of the same password do you think am not able to run the db.stats() command?

 

And also is that really needed to take Mongodb backup everyday? Our mongodb size is large(260 GB).If something corrupted do we have any options to recover the mongodb?

 

Windows standard backup software is running in the Alteryx server . Is that enough to take mongodb backup or do we really need to create a separate job/schedule to take the mongodb backup?

KevinP
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@Nikkath_15 If you are using the embedded Mongo instance even though the user name is the same each database will have its own user account. If you authenticate against the Admin database with the Admin password you should be able to read all of the database and create users but you can't modify or write to any of the other database and some functionality may not work as expected. Instead I would recommend authenticating using the non-admin password against the database you are actually working with. This will allowing you full control over the database your authenticated against. Keep in mind though that if you authenticate against AlteryxGallery you would only have access to that database. If you also wanted to work with AlteryxService you would need to authenticate against that database separately.

 

In regard to backing up and restoring the MongoDB please reference the following knowledge articles for our recommendations on best practices and procedures to backup and/or restore the database:

 

Alteryx Server Backup & Recovery Part 1: Best Practices

Alteryx Server Backup & Recovery Part 2: Procedures