During a maintenance activity such as upgrading, you must backup the VMware Aria Operations for Networks deployment to restore later, if required.

  • You will not lose any data during the backup process as the collector will continue to collect the data from data sources.

Procedure

  1. Backup platform VMs.
    1. Shutdown all VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform VMs sequentially in the reverse order (N,N-1,N-2.….,3,2). For example, if you have a 5 nodes cluster, power off from platform 5 to platform 1.
      Note: Select the Shut Down Guest OS option, and not Power Off.
    2. Initiate the backup by using any VMware backup solution like EMC Avamar, VMware VDP.
    3. Power on all VMware Aria Operations for Networks platform VMs sequentially in the forward order (1,2,3....,N-2,N-1,N). For example, if you have a 5 nodes cluster, power on from platform 1 to platform 5.
  2. It is recommended to take snapshots of the collector VMs with the Platform VMs. To do so, perform the following steps for each collector VM:
    1. Shutdown the VMware Aria Operations for Networks collector VM.
      Note: Select the Shut Down Guest OS option, and not Power Off.
    2. Initiate the backup by using any VMware backup solution like EMC Avamar, VMware VDP.
    3. Power on the VMware Aria Operations for Networks collectorVM.
    Note:
    • If you are unable take a backup using EMC Avamar or VMware VDP, take the snapshots of the platform and the collector VMs when the VMs are switched off.
    • Snapshots are not recommended in production environments and VMware does not recommend you to run VMs with snapshots for more than 3 days.
    • You cannot consider snapshots as a backup.