Back to S100: System Installation and Maintenance

Lesson 5: Maintaining Instances

In this lesson, you will learn how to perform maintenance tasks with Acumatica ERP instances and their databases.

Instance Maintenance: General Information

In Acumatica ERP, you can review and adjust various settings of the instance, such as its name or database. This topic provides an overview of the adjustments that you can make to existing instances and databases by using the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard.

Learning Objectives

In this lesson, you will do the following:

Check the state of Acumatica ERP application instances and their databases
View the settings of an Acumatica ERP instance
Change the name of an Acumatica ERP instance
Change a database in an Acumatica ERP instance

Applicable Scenarios

You may need to learn how to make some changes in an Acumatica ERP instance in scenarios that include the following:

You are a system administrator who needs to link the existing Acumatica ERP instance to a new database.
You are a system administrator who needs to view some settings of the Acumatica ERP instance and change its name.

Viewing of an Instance’s Settings You can view the following settings of an existing Acumatica ERP instance on the Instance Information page of the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard:

Instance Name
Instance Type, which can be RegularSite to indicate Acumatica ERP or CompanyPortal to indicate the Acumatica Self-Service Portal.
Instance File Path
Database
Database Version
Files Version
Instance URL
Website Name
Virtual Directory Name You can open the Instance Information page as follows:

Run the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard.
On the Welcome page, click Perform Application Maintenance.
Select the row with the instance whose settings you wish to review. Lesson 5: Maintaining Instances | 66
Click Review Instance Info.
On the Instance Information page, the instance and virtual directory names can be edited. The Instance Information page also provides quick access to the folder where the files of this instance are stored. Additionally, you can create a shortcut for the instance URL to get quick access to the site.

Changing of the Instance Database

You can change the database of an existing Acumatica ERP instance—for example, if you want to switch to a backup database. You can also associate the application instance with a new database and create it on the fly. To create a new database, you can use the Perform Database Maintenance option on the Welcome page of the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard. For more details, see To Perform Database Maintenance. When you connect the application instance to another existing database, the version of the database is checked. The versions of the database and the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard must be the same. If the database has a lower version, you must update it to correspond to the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard version. This can be done during the process of changing the database. This will also require you to update the instance site.

Instance Maintenance: Possible Update Statuses of an Instance

In Acumatica ERP, you can see which instances and databases you need to update. You can check the update status of your application instances and databases on the Application Maintenance page of the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard, as shown in the following screenshot.

Figure: The icons indicating the update statuses of instances

In the list of installed sites, you can see the following icons indicating the update status of each application instance:

Green check mark: The instance and the associated database are up to date. (Also, the versions of the application instance, the database, and the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard are the same.) Lesson 5: Maintaining Instances | 67
Yellow triangle with exclamation point: The instance and the instance database are outdated. (That is, the version of the application instance is the same as the version of the database and is older than the version of the installed Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard.) The application instance will still work, even if the instance and database are out of date.
Red circle with a white X: The instance or the instance database requires an update; that is, the versions of the instance and the instance's database are diﬀerent. The application instance does not work, and you must update it, or update only the instance or the instance database if their versions are outdated. This icon is also displayed when the database of the instance has not been found, or when the version of the instance, the database, or both is higher than the current version of the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard. On the Application Maintenance page, you can also see the following information:
The version of the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard that is installed on your server. The version is shown in the lower le corner of the page.
The application instance version, which is displayed in the Site Version column for each application instance.
The database version, which is displayed in the DB Version column for each application instance. Note the following points about versions:
The site version and the database version must be the same.
The Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard version cannot be lower than the site or database version. That is, you first upgrade the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard, and you may then upgrade the site and the database. If you do not upgrade the site and the database, they will continue functioning.
You can upgrade only the site, only the database, or both the site and the database.
You cannot use the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard with a higher version to deploy an application instance with a lower version.
Versions of the system that are lower than the current version can be installed only by first uninstalling the current version of the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard and then installing the desired version. The instances with a higher version will remain functional.

Instance Maintenance: To View the Settings of an Instance

The following activity will walk you through the process of viewing and modifying the settings of the Acumatica ERP application instance.

Story

Suppose that you are the system administrator of your company, and you need to review the settings of the existing Acumatica ERP application instance and change its name.

Process Overview

In this activity, you will review the settings of the AcumaticaT100 application instance and change the instance name.

System Preparation

Before you begin performing the step of this activity, make sure that you have performed the following prerequisite activity: Instance Deployment: To Deploy an Instance with Demo Data. Lesson 5: Maintaining Instances | 68

Step: Changing the Settings of an Application Instance To review the settings of the instance and change its name, do the following:

On the Start menu, click Acumatica ERP Configuration to open the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard.
On the Welcome page, click Perform Application Maintenance.
In the list of existing application instances, click the row with the AcumaticaT100 instance, and then click the Review Instance Info button. This opens the Instance Information page.
To change the instance name, do the following: a. Right of the Instance Name box, click Rename. b. Change the name of the instance to AcumaticaTraining, as shown in the following screenshot.
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      Figure: The updated instance name

   c. Right of the Instance Name box, click Save.
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Right of the Instance Files Path box, click Open. This opens the folder where the selected application instance is installed. In particular, this folder contains the web.config file of the current instance.
To change the virtual directory name, go back to the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard, and do the following: a. Right of the Virtual Directory Name box, click Rename. b. Change the virtual directory name to AcumaticaTraining. c. Right of the Virtual Directory Name box, click Save.
Click OK to save your changes.
In the dialog box with the notification message, click OK. This closes the Instance Information page and returns you to the Application Maintenance page.
Open the Instance Information page again and notice that the URL of the renamed AcumaticaTraining instance has also been updated, as shown in the following screenshot. Lesson 5: Maintaining Instances | 69
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    Figure: The updated URL of the instance
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Instance Maintenance: To Change the Database of an Instance

The following activity will walk you through the process of changing the database for an existing Acumatica ERP application instance.

On the Start menu, click Acumatica ERP Configuration to open the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard.
On the Welcome page, click Perform Application Maintenance.
In the list of existing application instances, click the row with the AcumaticaTraining instance, and click the Change Database button. This opens the Database Server Connection page, which provides a list of available servers.
On the Database Server Connection page, specify the following settings, and click Next to go to the next page:

Server Type: Microso SQL Server Lesson 5: Maintaining Instances | 70
Server Name: (local)
Windows Authentication: Selected

On the Database Configuration page, specify the following settings, and click Next to go to the next page:

Connect to an Existing Database: Selected
Available Databases on the Server: AcumaticaS100 Notice that the version of the selected database is automatically detected (as shown in the following screenshot), and it is the same version that the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard has.
Figure: The selection of an existing database

On the Tenant Setup page, click Next.
On the Database Connection page, click Next.
On the Confirmation of Configuration page, review your changes (see the following screenshot), and click Finish. Lesson 5: Maintaining Instances | 71
Figure: The changed database
Wait while the application instance settings are updated, and click OK in the confirmation dialog box. 10.On the Welcome page of the Acumatica ERP Configuration wizard, which opens, click Perform Application Maintenance. 11.On the Application Maintenance page, notice the values in the Database column. Two instances (AcumaticaS100 and AcumaticaTraining) are now connected to the same AcumaticaS100 database, as shown in the following screenshot.
Figure: The connection of the instances to the same database Lesson 6: Upgrading Acumatica ERP | 72