Backup and Restore of VMware Cloud Director Appliance

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

There are a number of well established third-party tools for backing up and restoring VMs. VMware Site Recovery Manager is capable of protecting Cloud Director environments

Symptoms:

Cloud Director virtual appliance natively supports backup and restore of Cloud Director cells as documented in Backup and Restore of VMware Cloud Director Appliance

The documented procedure will take care of backing up and recovering the state of Cloud Director including the database and all other settings configured during an install. However, some customers may choose to rely on a an external backup and restore tool that is either from VMware or from a third party to protect their Cloud Director environment. In this case our it is essential that the following conditions be met:

1. Ensure that the backup and restore tool is capable of backing up a running vSphere Virtual Machine  including all disks. It is important that the customer tests and verifies the backup/restore tool's capability.
2. Only to VCD virtual appliance environments with managed PostreSQL database can be protected using an external tool.

 

 

Resolution

Backup Procedure

 

1. Configure the backup/restore tool to back up or take a snapshot of the primary Cloud Director cell VM including all its disks. Make sure you are backing up the current primary cell at the time of the backup. Primary cell in a VCD cluster could change over time due to manually triggered or automated failover. Ensure backups/snapshots occur according to a schedule that is consistent with business continuity RPO and RTO goals.
2. Ensure that Cloud Director files and folders in the NFS share are backed up at the same time.

 

Restore Procedure

1. Restore primary VCD cell VM from a backup snapshot into a new environment (e.g. environment that does not have any VCD cells running)
2. The NFS transfer share that was used by the backed up appliance must be available to the restored VM. Restore Cloud Director files and folders in NFS if needed.
3. Power on the newly deployed primary VCD cell
4. Certificates (HTTP certificate, PostgreSQL database and appliance management UI endpoint certificate) will be recovered and there is no need to install new certificates unless new certificates are desired.
5. Deploy additional standby and application cells as needed. To deploy additional cells, see Deployment and Initial Configuration of Your VMware Cloud Director Appliance.