Backup and Restore of VMware Cloud Director Appliance

You can create backups that you can use to restore your VMware Cloud Director environment after a failure.

Back Up the Embedded Database of the VMware Cloud Director Appliance

You can use the VMware Cloud Director appliance management user interface to back up the primary appliance.

Prerequisites

Verify that the cluster health is with HEALTHY status. See View the VMware Cloud Director Appliance Cluster Health and Failover Mode.

Procedure

1. Log in as root to the appliance management UI of the primary, standby, or application cell at https://cell_eth0_ip_address:5480.
2. In the left panel, click the Backup tab.
   On the Backup page you can see a list of previous backups.
3. Click Backup Now.
4. To confirm the backup, click Backup.
   VMware Cloud Director appliance creates the backup files in the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/backups directory. The backups for the earlier VMware Cloud Director versions are located in the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/pgdb-backup directory. However, earlier version backups are incompatible with VMware Cloud Director 10.3.1 and later.
5. When the backup finishes, click Close.

Results

The newly created file appears in the list of backups. The backup name is in the format backup-date-time-format.tgz. For VMware Cloud Director appliance 10.3.2 and later, the backup name is in the format backup-date-time-format.zip.

What to do next

• If you do not expect to restore the system to version 10.3 or earlier, you can delete the backups in the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/pgdb-backup directory.
• If you do not expect to restore the system to version 10.3.1, you can delete the backups in the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/backups directory.
• Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.3.2, you can delete any unnecessary 10.3.2 and later backups by using the VMware Cloud Director appliance management user interface or the VMware Cloud Director appliance API. For information on how to use the VMware Cloud Director appliance API, see the VMware Cloud Director Appliance API Reference.

Restore the Primary VMware Cloud Director Appliance

To restore the primary appliance, you can use the VMware Cloud Director appliance management UI. If an HA cluster fails, for example, during a failed upgrade, you can use a backup to restore the primary, instead of using a VM snapshot.

Prerequisites

• Verify that you have a backup file of the primary appliance. See Back Up the Embedded Database of the VMware Cloud Director Appliance.
• Deploy one primary database cell. The newly deployed primary appliance version must match the backup appliance version. If you reuse the IP of the primary appliance, you do not need to replace the application cells later on. See Deployment and Initial Configuration of the VMware Cloud Director Appliance.
• Power-off the standby cells of the failed HA cluster.

Procedure

1. Log in as root to the appliance management UI of the newly deployed primary cell at https://FQDN_of_the_primary_appliance:5480.
2. In the left panel, click the Restore from Backup tab.
3. Enter the path that contains the backups directory, for example, remote_target:/data/transfer.
   The NFS mount and the share containing the backups directory must have 750 permission and vcloud.vcloud ownership.
4. When the validator confirms the NFS share, click Next.
5. Select the backup that you want to use to restore the primary appliance, and click Next.
   By default, only the backups with a compatible version appear. You can sort the backups by date, or filter the backups by the appliance version.
6. (Optional) Select which certificates you want to restore from the backup.
   For the restored appliance, you can reuse the HTTP certificate and the PostgreSQL database and appliance management UI endpoint certificate. If the legacy console proxy implementation is activated, the console proxy certificate is applicable only to version 10.4.

   Note: Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.4, the VMware Cloud Director service uses one certificate for HTTPS and console proxy communications. VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1 and later do not support the legacy implementation of the console proxy feature and you cannot restore the appliance if you select the console proxy certificate. For VMware Cloud Director 10.4, you can enable the legacy console proxy implementation that uses a separate console proxy certificate from the Feature Flags settings menu under the Administration tab of the Service Provider Admin Portal.
7. Enter the path to the transfer share for the restored primary appliance.
   You can use the same NFS share, or enter a new share for the restored appliance.
8. When the validator confirms the NFS share, click Restore.
9. When the restore operation completes successfully, click Close.

What to do next

1. If there are untrusted certificates, verify the certificate information and confirm that you trust the necessary certificates.
2. Deploy or restore additional standby and application cells.
   • To deploy additional cells, see Deployment and Initial Configuration of the VMware Cloud Director Appliance.
   • Similar to restoring the primary appliance, for VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1, you can restore the HTTPS certificate. For VMware Cloud Director 10.4, you can restore HTTP and console proxy certificates. VMware Cloud Director configures the certificates on the additional cells during the system setup of the VMware Cloud Director appliance management UI. When configuring the certificates for the additional cells, if the HTTP and console proxy certificates are referencing to the transfer share path, VMware Cloud Director configures the cells to use the same certificates as the primary appliance. If the HTTP and console proxy certificates are referencing a local path and have the same key-password as root, VMware Cloud Director configures the additional cells to use self-signed certificates.
3. If the failover mode before the restore was Automatic, you must set it again to Automatic by using the VMware Cloud Director appliance API.
4. If the VMware Cloud Director appliance FIPS mode was on before the restore, you must set it again by using the VMware Cloud Director appliance API.

   The cell FIPS mode restores automatically.