Restoring Degraded Environments

If your environment is inaccessible or the associated Agent VM status is CRITICAL, you may be required to recover the Agent VM. Recovering a failed or lost Agent VM in your running VMware Data Services Manager installation is similar to tasks performed during deployment: the Organization Administrator deploys a new Agent VM and onboards the new Agent, but in Recover Environment mode.

VMware Data Services Manager does not automatically transfer custom certificates for you; you must manually upload any custom certificates to the new Agent VM.

Note: You cannot perform the Agent recovery process through the Provider console. Therefore, do not enter the parameters, Provider IP, Provider Username, Provider Password, and the Provider API Certificate when you install the Agent .ova file during the Agent recovery process.

Audience

The procedures in this topic are performed by a VMware Data Services Manager user in the Organization Administrator role.

Prerequisites

Before you recover the Agent VM, ensure that you can identify:

• The static IP address of the original Agent VM; you must deploy the new Agent VM with the same configuration.
• The environment identifier (ENV ID) assigned to the original Agent VM.
• Upload the custom certificates (if applicable) on the Agent VM by using the /api/tenant/onboarding?action=add-trusted-certificates API.

Procedure

Perform the following procedure to recover an Agent VM in your VMware Data Services Manager installation:

1. Deploy an Agent VM Using a vSphere Client.

   Be sure to deploy the VM with the same static IP address as the original Agent VM.

2. Prepare to Onboard the new Agent by ensuring that:

   • The Agent VM is deployed and has booted properly.

   • The Agent VM /etc/hosts file includes an entry similar to the following:

     <Tenant Appliance vCenter-IP>       company_vc.vsphere.local
     

   • You can identify the root login credentials for the newly-deployed Agent VM.

3. Onboard the Agent with VMware Data Services Manager.

   Be sure to select the Recover Environment onboarding type, and provide the environment identifier assigned to the original Agent VM.

4. If you have registered custom certificates in your VMware Data Services Manager installation, you must manually copy these certificates to the new Agent VM as described in Managing Certificates on an Agent.