Back up, restore and move PortWall to a new server

The Backup & Restore page exports your whole PortWall configuration as one portable file, and imports one back — for disaster recovery and for moving onto another server.

What's in a backup

Every setting and policy an operator tunes: site policies and bindings, geo / egress / allowlist policies, threat-intel feed enablement, brute-force settings, notification preferences and alert-email settings, TLS defaults, tenant policy, and more. Each section is optional, so an older or partial backup still imports what it has.

What's deliberately not in a backup

• Secrets — the SMTP password and the licence key. They are machine-bound (DPAPI) and meaningless on another box.
• Identity — the installation's fabric key and install id.
• Runtime / history — blocks, events, quarantine, downloaded feed data. These are regenerated per host.

On a new host you re-enter the licence key; the import keeps whatever SMTP password that host already has.

Export

1. Go to Backup & Restore.
2. Click Download backup — a timestamped .json file downloads.
3. Store it somewhere safe. It contains no secrets, but it does describe your whole security posture.

Import (restore or migrate)

1. Choose the backup file.
2. Click Preview changes — nothing is written yet; you see a per-section table of what would be added or updated.
3. For a move to a different server, tick Skip host-specific network settings so the old box's bind/advertised/origin addresses, management ports and catch-all aren't dragged along.
4. Click Apply import.

Import merges — it adds and updates, and never deletes config the file doesn't contain — so restoring onto a live host is safe.

Migrating to a new server

1. On the new box, install PortWall and re-enter the licence key.
2. Import the backup with Skip host-specific network settings ticked.
3. Set this host's addresses via the setup wizard, and re-enter the SMTP password on the Notifications page.
4. Confirm the Overview looks right, then cut traffic over.

A configuration backup is not a database backup: it captures what you configured, not the event history. Take one before any big change, and keep one off the box.