To perform operations such as restoring or cloning, as a best practice, you must back up the data on the Replica nodes in the Replica Network.

Backing up the Replica node data lets you save the data. If an operation fails, you can restore the lost or corrupted data.

To save storage space and minimize cost you can take snapshots when you perform a backup on your Amazon EBS volumes. Snapshots are incremental backups that only capture the data that has changed from the most recent saved snapshot. For more information, see the Amazon EBS snapshot documentation.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that you have the deployed blockchain ID information.
  • Familiarize yourself with the backup and restore consideration for your VMware Blockchain nodes. See VMware Blockchain Node Backup and Restore Considerations on AWS.
  • Verify that you have access to the latest version of VMware Blockchain.

  • Identify the following details from the VMware Blockchain Orchestrator output directory, /home/blockchain/output.

    Blockchain ID

    Current blockchain version

    Replica node IP address

    Client node IP address

    VMware Blockchain vmbc user password for all the Replica and Client node VMs

  • If the Concord operator containers were deployed, verify that the Concord operator container is running. See Instantiate the Concord Operator Container for AWS.

Procedure

  1. SSH into the VMware Blockchain Orchestrator appliance.
  2. Enter the login credentials for the blockchain user account.
  3. Navigate to the /home/blockchain directory.
  4. Stop all the applications that invoke connection requests to the Daml Ledger.
  5. Stop the Replica nodes. 
    curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=stop
  6. Verify that all the containers except the agent and deployed Concord operator container are running on the selected Replica node. 
    sudo docker ps -a

    If the sudo docker ps -a command shows that some containers, with the exception of agent and deployed Concord operator container, are still running, rerun the command or use the sudo docker stop <container_name> command to stop the containers.

  7. Back up the data on each of the Replica nodes.
    1. In the EC2 interface, select the VMware Blockchain node from the Amazon EC2 page and navigate to the Storage tab.
    2. In the EC2 interface, select the data volume ID, navigate to the EBS volumes, and select Actions > Create Snapshot.

      This step creates a snapshot of the EBS volume you can use for restoring your data.

  8. Save the snapshot ID and the node IP address.

    This information is used to map the snapshot and node during the Replica node restore process.

  9. Start all the applications that invoke connection requests to the Daml Ledger.
  10. Start all the Replica nodes in the Replica Network. 
    curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=start
  11. Start all the Client nodes. 
    curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=start

What to do next

If there is a failure or you want to clone a deployment, you can restore it from the backup data. See Restore Replica Nodes from the Backup Data on AWS.