What should I back up in ColdFusion 9?

Question

What should we back up within ColdFusion 9?

We are backing up the websites and the databases, but what should we back up within ColdFusion Administrator? I am concerned with the Data Sources, Web Services etc...

Any best practices / pit falls we should be aware of?

Answer 1

Backup the following:

• any XML files in the /lib directory. This might be buried down in the /jrun4/servers directory on a multi-instance install, or it might be in cfusion9/lib. The XML files all begin with "neo-" and contain your settings.
• Jrun.XML and Web.xml
• Any custom tags in the various customtag directories.
• Any CFX tags
• Any third party jar files you might be using.
• The keystore file in the java security directory

Where all these things live greatly depends on your install. There's quite a bit of variety in the way you can run CF on a given platform. The tips above apply to CF 9 and below. CF 10 will have some similarity but things are in very different places.

Answer 2

Don't forget to grab a copy of the Settings Summary in the CFAdmin. Pulling that information periodically has saved my butt when "but nothing has changed!" errors start occurring. I kind of wish CF had a way of automatically making a history of that.