Managing aliases on PXI device in NI-XNET Database Editor

[Hannes777]

I'm looking for the easiest and most reliable way to save a backup of the "alias manager file" on a PXI controller. I think it is almost certain that I'm using the wrong technical words for what I'm trying to explain, so I'll try to do it in a lengthy explanation of what happened and what I found on the internet.

Over the last few months our system has twice stopped working due to mismatched file paths in the alias manager file of the PXI controller. 

This week we moved the whole folder of our Veristand project to a different location on the PC hard drive. When we tried to start the Veristand project, we got an error that indicated that the NI-XNET file paths were wrong. I opened the NI-XNET Database Editor, as the error message indicated. I could see that the file paths in the Database Editor were pointing to the previous location of the DBC files. I tried to find a way to edit the paths to correct them. According to the information I could find on the NI website (Managing Aliases - NI), it looked like it is not possible to edit them. I must have done something wrong then, because all the paths then disappeared. We have previously managed to remove all these paths in the Alias Manager accidentally. Most of our team have not worked on NI and Veristand before.

I manually added all the paths to the new location of the DBC files. I was very happy to find that this solved the problem.

From what I saw in various messages on the NI forum, I get the impression that there is an xml file on the PXI controller that stores the NI-XNET aliases. It also looks like this file can be downloaded from the PXI controller to the system PC through FTP or WebDAV. It looks like it can also be loaded from the PC to the PXI controller.

Can anybody please confirm if this is correct?

What is the name of this xml Alias file? I would like to download this file and keep a backup copy that we can load back onto the PXI controller next time we break it. 

Is there a better or easier way to keep a backup of the working Aliases and restore it on the PXI controller?

[ZYOng]

The XNET databases will be downloaded to the target automatically upon deployment. You don't have to worry about the files on the RT target. Just update the file path on host PC will do.

[Hannes777 · Accepted solution]

I received the information I was looking for about the aliases xml file, from NI support.

XNET aliases and the associated file paths are stored in an XML file on the disc of the Veristand PC. The filename is nixnetAlias.xml, and the file path is C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\NI-XNET. If you are unable to find it in that folder, you can search your C drive for nixnetAlias.xml.

They also recommended reviewing this (Can NI-XNET Database Aliases Be Programmatically Imported/Exported?) web page for a programmatic and efficient method to export or import the configuration in similar cases.