Let's face it, sometimes bad things just happen to computer systems.  The worst of which is complete and total hard-drive failure resulting in loss of data, software installations, and configurations.

The last thing you need after correcting this type of problem is to spend hours re-entering all of the servers and devices and alert configurations into IPSentry.

In another situation, you may need to re-deploy the system on which IPSentry is running and migrate IPSentry to a different system - but again, you need to get the settings from one machine to another without sitting down for hours and reconfiguring everything. 

Take the following steps to provide solutions to both problem above.

1. 
   Select Tools, Backup Configuration.
   
   
2. 
   Select a file name to which you want the settings written.
   
   
3. 
   Hit the Backup button.
   
   
4. 
   Backup this .IPZ file for later use.
   Basically, this is just a zip file which can be read by zip file utilities.
   

Now, when you need to recover your settings for one reason or another:

1. 
   Select Tools/Restore Configuration.
   
   
2. 
   Select the destination folder (This should be IPSDataRoot).
   
   
3. 
   Hit the Restore button.
   
   

Note: When restoring settings, IPSentry use Merge+Overwrite.  Any settings that are duplicated in the .IPZ file will take precedence over existing entries.  Any entries not in the IPZ file will remain intact.  Any entries in the IPZ that do not exist in the current settings will be added to the configuration.
 
Note: System specific pathing as well as modem configurations may need to be modified to fit the new system configuration.
 
Note: The backup/restore will only backup and restore Configuration data.  No backup or restore is being made for Statistical data, reporting data, or other data file modifications.  In short, *.XML in the IPSDataRoot folder are the only files being processed.

*** THIS IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PROPER DATA BACKUP & RECOVERY