Back Up Tenable Nessus

Using the Nessus CLI, you can back up your Tenable Nessus to restore it later on any system, even if it is a different operating system. When you back up Tenable Nessus, your license information and settings are preserved. Tenable Nessus does not back up scan results.

Note: Nessus automatically creates a backup file every 24 hours, and you can configure how many daily backup files Nessus stores before discarding them. For more information, see the Backup Days To Keep logging setting.

Note: If you perform a cross-platform backup and restore between Linux and Windows systems, after you restore Tenable Nessus, you must reconfigure any Tenable Nessus configurations that use schedules. Schedules do not transfer correctly across these platforms because the operating systems use different timezone names.

To back up Tenable Nessus:

  1. Access Tenable Nessus from a command terminal.

  2. Create the Tenable Nessus backup file by running the following command:

    > nessuscli backup --create <backup_filename>

    Tenable Nessus creates the backup file in the following directory:

    • Linux: /opt/nessus/var/nessus
    • Windows: C:\ProgramData\Tenable\Nessus\nessus
    • macOS: /Library/Nessus/run/var/nessus

    The backup file includes the following files:

    • /nessus/var/nessus/migrate.db

    • /nessus/var/nessus/tenable-plugins-a-20210201.pem

    • /nessus/var/nessus/log.json

    • /nessus/var/nessus/master.key

    • /nessus/var/nessus/tenable-plugins-b-20210201.pem

    • /nessus/var/nessus/tenable-plugins-20210201.pem

    • /nessus/var/nessus/nessus_org.pem

    • /nessus/var/nessus/users/admin/auth/hash

    • /nessus/var/nessus/users/admin/auth/admin

    • /nessus/var/nessus/users/admin/auth/rules

    • /nessus/var/nessus/users/admin/policies.db

    • /nessus/var/nessus/terrascan.db

    • /nessus/var/nessus/uuid

    • /nessus/var/nessus/backups/

    • /nessus/etc/nessus/nessusd.conf.imported

    • /nessus/etc/nessus/nessusd.rules

    • /nessus/etc/nessus/nessusd.db

    • /nessus/etc/nessus/nessus-fetch.db

    • /nessus/com/nessus/CA/servercert.pem

    • /nessus/com/nessus/CA/cacert.pem

    • /nessus/var/nessus/CA/cakey.pem

    • /nessus/var/nessus/CA/serverkey.pem

    • /nessus/var/nessus/global.db

  3. (Optional) Move the Tenable Nessus backup file to a backup location on your system.

What to do next: