Recovering vCenter Server Appliance, Workload Control Plane and NSX from an environmental failure

Products

• VMware NSX
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to recover from a total loss of all storage and servers where all the physical hardware or the data in the hardware is lost. It involves running a script to recover the system to its state at the time of backup.

Environment

VMware NSX-T

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

1. Access the VCSA and save the NSX MUB file located at /storage/lifecycle/nsx/stage/bin to a storage device.
2. Restore the vCenter Server. For more information, see File-Based Backup and Restore of vCenter Server Appliance.
3. Download the attached 76585_recovery.py and transfer it to a temporary directory (/tmp) on the vCenter Server Appliance.
4. Connect to the vCenter Server Appliance and log in with root credentials.
5. Transfer the NSX MUB file saved in a storage device as mentioned in step 1 to the /storage/lifecycle/nsx/stage/bin directory on the vCenter Server Appliance.
6. Run the script with this command: python recovery.py

Note: If the NSX MUB file was not saved in a storage device as mentioned in step (1), the script will fail with an error indicating that the NSX MUB file is not present on the VCSA. Correct the issue by uploading the NSX MUB file of the version indicated in the error message, then run the script again.

7. In case of failure, review the error messages and correct the issue, then run the script again.