Back up the SDDC Manager VM regularly to avoid downtime and data loss in case of a system failure. If the SDDC Manager VM does fail, you can restore VM to the last backup.
- Schedule backups when SDDC Manager is not running any workflows.
- Take periodic backups on a daily to weekly frequency.
- If a workflow does not complete successfully and the Cloud Foundation environment is in this state when the scheduled backup is taken, resolve the failure as soon possible and take an unscheduled backup. Restoring your environment from a backup that includes unresolved failures is more difficult than restoring from a clean backup.
A workflow is resolved when the environment is not in an intermediate state. For some SDDC Manager workflows, the workflow can only be resolved by fixing the failure conditions and retrying the operation. Other workflows can also be resolved by invoking the corresponding delete operation. For example, if adding a host to a workload domain fails, either fix the condition that caused the workflow to fail, or run the workflow that removes the host from the cluster. Contact VMware support if you are unable to resolve a workflow.
You can back up and restore SDDC Manager with an image-based or a file-based solution (starting from Cloud Foundation 3.7.2). It is recommended that you use the image-based solution. The file-based approach is more limited, has a higher network-ingress cost since patch and install bundles have to be re-downloaded, and requires scripting and working with APIs.
For a file-based backup of the SDDC Manager VM, you must manually configure the NSX Managers in your VMware Cloud Foundation environment to back up their state to an FTP site. You must repeat this step every time you create a workload domain.
