I am running into issues using the ArcGIS REST API import site operation because the server is federated with Portal and only has a domain certificate (i.e. not CA-signed). So I am looking for a short term solution to back up the services on ArcGIS Server using a simple Python script. My question is, what information is needed in order to republish a service?
I have successfully written Python scripts that copy the .mxd files from the server to a backup location and then republish the services from these files, but I am running into data source issues because the .mxd file does not know where to look for the data. I am not sure how to get around that issue. Also, I thought it was strange that within the arcgisserver\directories\arcgissystem\arcgisinput\\extracted\v101 folder there exists an .msd file. It was my understanding that server is now using .sd files, so am I confused why it would be storing an .msd file. I thought I might be able to use this as a backup for the service, but it would essentially be using legacy code.
As you can gather from the post, I am completely new to ArcGIS Server administration so any insight into this matter would be greatly appreciated.
