Considerations for Backing Up and Restoring vSphere with Tanzu

This topic provides an overview of the backup and restore process for vSphere with Tanzu, and provides high-level considerations for implementing your backup and restore strategy for vSphere with Tanzu.

vSphere with Tanzu backup and restore comprises various layers and tools.

The table summarizes these layers and tools from the top-down, workload to infrastructure. Refer to the individual sections for details on performing backup and restore for that layer.

Scenario	Tools	Comments
Backup and restore vSphere Pods	Velero Plugin for vSphere	Install and configure the plugin on the Supervisor Cluster. Note: The plugin is not backing up Supervisor Cluster state. See Install and Configure the Velero Plugin for vSphere on the Supervisor Cluster. See Backup and Restore vSphere Pods Using the Velero Plugin for vSphere.
Backup stateless and stateful workloads on a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster and restore to a cluster provisioned by the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service	Velero Plugin for vSphere	Both Kubernetes metadata and persistent volumes can be backed up and restored. Velero snapshotting (not Restic) is used for persistent volumes. See Install and Configure the Velero Plugin for vSphere on a Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster. See Backup and Restore Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster Workloads Using the Velero Plugin for vSphere.
Backup stateless and stateful workloads on a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster and restore to a conformant Kubernetes cluster not provisioned by the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service	Standalone Velero and Restic	If you require portability, use standalone Velero. Must include Restic for stateful applications. See Install and Configure Standalone Velero and Restic on a Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster. See Backup and Restore Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster Workloads Using Standalone Velero and Restic.
Supervisor Cluster After a Supervisor Cluster upgrade, you must do a new backup. Restoring a vCenter Server to a backup where it expects an older version of Supervisor Cluster is not supported.	vCenter Server Velero Plugin for vSphere Standalone Velero and Restic	Restore vCenter Server from backup. vCenter will recreate all three Supervisor Cluster control plane VMs. Restore cluster workloads from backup using the plugin or standalone Velero and Restic.
vCenter Configuration	vCenter Server	If vCenter is lost, use vCenter Server to backup and restore vCenter objects. See Backup and Restore vCenter Server.
NSX-T Data Center	NSX-T Manager	Load balancer and ingress services depend on NSX-T backup. Use NSX-T Manager to backup and restore the NSX-T database. See Backup and Restore NSX-T Data Center.