You restore the appliance by deploying a new appliance with the same network settings and by using a single locally downloaded .enc backup file.

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

Go to the management interface of the restored appliance at https://Appliance-IP-Address:8043. On the System Tasks page or the Replication 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.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that you downloaded the on-premises-backup-product_version-instance_id-date-timestampUTC.tar.bz2.enc file locally and you have the password for the backup.
  • Verify that the version and the network settings of the newly deployed appliance exactly match the version and the network settings of the backed-up appliance.
  • Verify that before restoring the newly deployed appliance, the existing backed-up on-premises appliance is powered off.
    Caution: Restoring while the appliance is operational may corrupt the replications.
The on-premises-backup-product_version-instance_id-date-timestampUTC.tar.bz2.enc file contains all the backup information to restore the appliance to the date-timestamp. For information about taking a backup, see Back up the appliance.

Procedure

  1. Log in to management interface of the newly deployed appliance.
    1. In a Web browser, go to https://Appliance-IP-Address/ui/admin.
    2. Log in by entering the root user password that you set during the OVA deployment.
  2. 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. Under Steps to restore from archive, click Import the backup archive in....
  4. In the Restore from backup archive window, browse for the appliance backup file, enter its password, and restore the appliance.
    1. Click Browse and select the locally downloaded .enc appliance backup file.
    2. In the Password text box, enter the password used to encrypt the backup.
    3. Click Restore.
      The restore starts and might take a while to complete. You cannot log in to the appliance while the restore is in progress.
    After the restore completes, the appliance restarts.
  5. (Optional) After the services start, verify that the restore is successful.
    1. Log in to the management interface of the newly restored appliance.
      Note: After restoring, when you have a configured backup schedule the following message appears in the Backup Archives page under Scheduled backup tasks: Generate backup archive task, which generated the scheduled backup archive used for the restore, shows Task canceled due to service reboot.
    2. In the left pane, click System Tasks.
      After restore, the Generate backup archive task, which generated the backup archive used for the restore, also shows Task canceled due to service reboot.
    3. Verify the Target of task.restore.backup.

Results

A misalignment between the replication settings stored in the database and the ones loaded from the backup might happen. As a result, RPO violations, instances with differing numbers, and others might be present. As a resolution, reapply the replication settings by reconfiguring the affected replications .

Note:
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.

What to do next

You can perform replication workflows and after confirming that the newly restored appliance is operational, you can decommission the backed-up appliance that is powered off.