As a provider, you restore VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances in the cloud site on appliances with the same version, appliance role and network settings and by using a single appliance backup .enc file, extracted from the locally downloaded backup archive.

Note: Restoring backups containing deleted replications at the time of restore:

In the management interface of a restored Replicator Service instance, on the System Tasks page the Reload destination tasks run indefinitely or fail with a Lock acquisition timed out for object: 'H4-id' for each replication that is not present since restoring the backup. To manually delete these replications, click the Emergency Recovery page, select them then click Delete.

  • To restore a single appliance in the cloud site, depending on whether restoring on a newly deployed, or restoring in-place over the backed-up appliance:
    • When deploying a new appliance, power off the existing backed-up appliance in the site with the same role.
    • When restoring in-place over the backed-up appliance, without deploying a new appliance, do not power it off.
    Restoring a single appliance does not require following the restore order and can be performed for any of the backed-up cloud appliances. For more information, see Backing up and restoring in the Cloud Director site.
  • To restore several of the appliances in the cloud site, but not all, follow the same restore order as with restoring the entire site. For more information, see Backing up and restoring in the Cloud Director site.
  • To restore an entire backed-up cloud site, restore the same number of appliances with matching appliance roles. For example, to restore a site consisting of a Tunnel Appliance, a Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance, and a couple of Replicator Appliance instances, you must restore a Tunnel Appliance, a Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance, and a couple of Replicator Appliance instances by following the restore order bellow.
The backup archive cloud-backup-product.version.build-site_name-date-timestampUTC.tar.bz2 file contains all of the following password-protected .enc appliance backup files for all of the cloud appliances in the site.
  1. One tunnel-backup_id.tar.bz2.enc appliance backup file for firstly restoring the Tunnel Appliance.
  2. One cloud-backup_id.tar.bz2.enc appliance backup file for then restoring the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance.
  3. One or more replicator-backup_id-IP_Address.tar.bz2.enc appliance backup files for lastly restoring each Replicator Appliance instance in the site.
These appliance backup files contain all the backup information for restoring each of the appliances in the cloud site to the date-timestamp point in time when the backup was generated. For more information, see Back up all the appliances in the cloud.

To restore multiple appliances, repeat this procedure multiple times, according to the restore order and restore the appliances in the cloud site by using the appropriate appliance backup file for each appliance role, as extracted from the backup archive.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.3 or later is installed in the cloud site for in-place restore and for restore of a single or several cloud appliances, but not all appliances in the site.
  • Verify that you have the backup password and that you locally extract the backup archive cloud-backup-product.version.build-site_name-date-timestampUTC.tar.bz2 file, resulting in several .enc appliance backup files, listed below.
  • Verify that the following settings of the cloud appliance for restoring exactly match the backed-up appliance.
    • Version
    • Appliance role
    • Network settings
  • Verify that before restoring on a newly deployed appliance, the existing backed-up appliance in the site with the same role is powered off.
    Caution: Restoring on a newly deployed appliance while the existing backed-up appliance in the site with the same role is operational might corrupt the replications.
    However, for VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.3 or later, when restoring an appliance in-place, where the backed-up appliance matches the appliance on which you restore, do not power it off.

Procedure

  1. Follow the restore order and log in to the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances.
    1. In a Web browser, go to the management interface of the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances in the following restore order:
      Restore Order Appliance Service Management Interface
      1 Tunnel Appliance Tunnel Service https://Tunnel-Appliance-IP-Address/ui/admin
      2 Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance Cloud Service https://Replication-Management-Appliance-IP-Address/ui/admin
      3 Each Replicator Appliance instance Replicator Service instances https://Replicator-Appliance-IP-Address/ui/admin
    2. Log in by entering the root user password.
      If restoring on a newly deployed appliance, this is the password that you set during the OVA deployment.
  2. If restoring on a newly deployed appliance, in the VMware Cloud Director Availability Appliance Password window, change the initial root user password.
    1. Enter the root user password that you set during the OVA deployment.
    2. Enter and confirm a new password. The password that you enter must be a secured password with a minimum of eight characters and it must consist of:
      • At least one lowercase letter.
      • At least one uppercase letter.
      • At least one number.
      • At least one special character, such as & # % .
  3. Initiate restoring from the backup archive in the following restore order, according to the appliance role you restore.
    1. Firstly, for the Tunnel Appliance, in the left pane under the System section, click Backup Archives then click Restore.
    2. Secondly, repeat the same restore actions for the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance.
    3. Lastly, for each Replicator Appliance instance repeat the same restore actions.
  4. Following the restore order of the appliances according to their role, browse for the appliance backup file, enter its password, and restore the appliance.
    1. In the Restore from a backup archive window, click Browse and select the extracted .enc appliance backup file for the appliance role you are restoring.
      • First, for restoring the Tunnel Appliance select the tunnel-backup_id.tar.bz2.enc appliance backup file.
      • Then, for restoring the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance select the cloud-backup_id.tar.bz2.enc appliance backup file.
      • Last, for restoring each Replicator Appliance instance select each of the replicator-backup_id-IP_Address.tar.bz2.enc appliance backup files.
    2. In the Password text box, enter the password used for encrypting the backup.
    3. To initiate the restoring of this appliance, click Restore.
      Restoring starts and might take a while until complete. While restoring is in progress, you cannot login to this appliance.
    After restoring completes, this appliance restarts.
  5. (Optional) After the services start, verify that restoring is successful.
    1. Log in to the management interface of the newly restored appliance.
    2. In the left pane, click System Tasks.
      After the restore, the Generate backup archive task, which generated the backup archive used for the restore, shows Task aborted due to service reboot.
    3. Verify the Target of task.restore.backup.
      For the Replicator Appliance instances, on the System tasks page, you see Reload replication tasks for each incoming replication of this Replicator Service instance.

Results

After repeating this procedure multiple times, you restored some or all of the cloud appliances in the site with matching appliance roles.
  • The Tunnel Appliance is restored from the backup.
  • The Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance is restored from the backup.
  • All of the Replicator Appliance instances are restored from the backup.
Note:
  • After restore, there might be a misalignment between the replication settings stored in the database and the ones loaded from the backup file. As a result, you might see RPO violations, differing numbers of instances, and others, that you can resolve by reconfiguring the affected replications for reapplying their replication settings.
  • After restoring, if an RPO violation is present, the replication might be missing from the source Replicator Service. This situation might happen when the source site is restored to a point in time when the replication is not yet started, leading to not working synchronization. As a workaround, you can attempt manually synchronizing the replication. If the synchronization task fails with SourceReplicationNotFound, fail over the replication, stop the replication, then deactivate the replication services for that virtual machine in the source ESXi host, see KB https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2106946. Finally, start a new replication with a seed virtual machine.
  • Instances
    After restore, the instances might disappear for some replications. In most cases, the data is not lost and a subsequent synchronization transfers only a delta. To get an instance, either wait for automatic synchronization, or perform a synchronization manually.
  • After evacuating a datastore, all backups taken priorly cannot restore the replications. Take a backup every time the replications are moved from one datastore to another to ensure restoring is successful. For information about datastore evacuation, see Evacuate the replications data from a datastore.

What to do next

You can perform replication workflows. After confirming that the restored appliances are operational, if you restored on a newly deployed appliances, you can decommission the backed-up appliances that are powered off.