# Appliance Backups

Access Anywhere Servers include a MariaDB and Solr database as we as some stateful configuration files that should be backed up.

## Appliance Backup - Default Database

Single-node appliances with the default internal database should be backed through the virtualization platform. For example, with AWS this would mean using [[:aws-gettingstarted#appliance_backup|EC2 Snapshots]].

These virtual machine snapshots can taken with no downtime, with minimal disruption and can be restored relatively quickly since the database doesn't need to be explicitly restored. 

## Appliance Backup - External Database

Installations that run across multiple nodes should use virtual machine snapshots to backup the nodes running the MariaDB and Solr databases.

Appliances that use a standalone database should follow the vendor instructions for backing up and restoring the database. Since a MariaDB database must be backed up when it is not being updated third-party vendors generally back up standby or replica databases.