Knowledge Base

How to move an installation of PRTG Traffic Grapher to another computer

First, install the latest version of PRTG on the new computer to keep downtime at a minimum.

In order to move a PRTG Traffic Grapher installation to the new PC we recommend to first make a copy of your current installation into a new folder. To do this please use the "File -> Save As..." menu entry, create a new folder (preferably on a shared network drive), choose a new filename, and then click "OK" to save the data. This will create a .PRTG configuration file with the current data and also copy all relevant historic data files into a subfolder of the selected folder.


Afterwards, copy the new folder with all subfolders to the new machine. Now start PRTG Traffic Grapher on the new machine, select the "File -> Open" menu item and select the PRTG file that you just copied on the new machine. This will restore the sensor configuration, as well as the historic data available.

Note: Because the data cache must be recomputed, the initial startup can take some time (even hours for large installations, see below).

The final step is to open the "Extras|Options" dialog and review/set all (!) settings.

Please note that your old configuration data is not touched during this process and the previous installation is still active. After checking that the new installation works fine you should halt monitoring on the old PC to keep network load low. Later eventually delete the old data manually and deinstall PRTG Traffic Grapher. Make sure the service has also been uninstalled. Otherwise it would start up after rebooting your system.

Some Notes:

  • If you do not own a site license you can only run one instance of your license key in your LAN at a time. So you may need to stop PRTG on the old PC in order to get PRTG running on the new PC
  • When using NetFlow sensors remember to change the configuration of your Cisco devices in order to send the NetFlow data to the new PC (or migrate the old PC's IP address to the new PC)
  • When using Packet Sniffer sensors you must make sure that the old and the new PC "see" the same traffic. E.g. if you use a monitoring port of your switch to monitor your network you need to connect the new PC to the switch port that was previously used by the old PC (or you must reconfigure the switch). The network card will also have a new interal name. As such, you must reselect the NIC. Double click the sensor in the sensor list and review the settings on the "Communications" tab.
  • If your users must be able to access the web interface on the previously used IP address you also must migrate the IP address to the new machine (otherwise PRTG's webserver will not be able to se it)
  • If you have created or edited a web template or the files "filterlibrary.dat" or "layout.dat" you must copy these to the new machine manually
For power users:

To avoid the sometimes lengthy recalculation of the data cache you can also do the following, more complex procedure
  • stop PRTG Traffic Grapher on the old PC
  • copy the original "yourname.prtg" file together with the "yourname" subfolder from the old PC to the new PC
  • the files are stored in the following folder by default: 
    (common documents)\PRTG Traffic Grapher\prtg traffic grapher.ini"
  • Open the "yourname.prtg" file on the new machine and follow all other steps above

For more information about how PRTG stores its data please see www.paessler.com/support/kb/questions/25

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