How to determine the NSX version to use in order to restore a given NSX backup file

Products

• VMware NSX Networking

Issue/Introduction

This article provides a simple and easy way to determine the NSX version of a backup file. Each backup file is created along with a corresponding properties file, identifiable by its .backupproperties extension.

 

It can be opened with a text editor and has the following content:

<snip>
em.majorVersion=16
em.minorVersion=2
em.buildNumber=4292526
em.preReleaseType=Beta
em.marketingMajorVersion=6 #NSX Major Version
em.marketingMinorVersion=2 #NSX Minor Version
em.marketingPatchVersion=4 #NSX Patch Version
</snip>

Symptoms:

• You are unable to determine which NSX version to use in order to restore from a selected backup file.
• Given a backup file, you want to know which NSX version the backup file corresponds to.

Environment

VMware NSX for vSphere 6.2.x
VMware NSX for vSphere 6.4.x
VMware NSX for vSphere 6.3.x

Cause

This issue may occur if you configure the backup of all the NSX instances (of different versions) to the same FTP server (location).

Resolution

To avoid this issue, save backups of NSX instances in different backup locations.

To resolve this issue, run the attached script and pass the properties file corresponding to the backup file to determine the version of NSX that needs to be used to restore the backup.

For example:

$ python NSX-Backup-Restore-Version-Check.py abc_corp_Thu13Apr2017.backupproperties
Use NSX version 6.2.4 to restore this backup.
$

Note: A Computer/System with Python installed is required to run the script.