Back up and restore the eCRF

A backup saves the eCRF’s data, encrypted, in a storage bucket of your own. You can take backups automatically on a schedule, or whenever you need one, and restore any of them.

Who can do this: System Administrator. For other administrators, the page shows Nothing found.

In the admin, under Operations, open Backups.

Note

These screenshots show only the parts of the page that look the same on every deployment. The rest depends on your storage and your backups.

Set up backups

You set up backups once, in the Settings tab.

1. Under Storage connection, enter the S3-compatible bucket that receives the backups: Endpoint, Bucket, Access key and Secret key. The fields Region and Prefix are optional. Use a bucket that only this deployment writes to.

2. Under Encryption, select Generate encryption key. The admin shows Save your encryption key.

3. Select Copy key. Store the key somewhere safe outside the eCRF. Select Done. You need this key to restore a backup, and you cannot change it after setup.

4. Under Schedule, check Enable automatic backups to take backups on a schedule. The fields Cron expression and Timezone set when: by default, every day at 02:00 UTC.

5. Select Validate and save.

To change the storage later, leave the key fields blank to keep the saved ones.

Take a backup now

Select Back up now, at the top of the page. It is available once backups are set up and no backup or restore is running.

The Backup history tab lists every backup, with its source:

• A Manual backup ran when an administrator selected Back up now.
• A Scheduled backup ran on the schedule.
• A Before update backup ran automatically before an update of the eCRF.

Select Download to keep a copy of a backup elsewhere.

Restore a backup

Danger

A restore replaces all of the eCRF’s current data with the backup’s, and makes the eCRF unavailable while it runs. You lose the data entered since the backup.

1. In Backup history, find the backup. Select Restore & details.

2. Select Restore this backup.

3. When the browser asks whether to restore the backup, confirm. It warns that the backup will replace the current data.