A system administrator backs up the full vRealize Automation installation on a regular basis. Plan the backup around efficiencies and periods of low activity.

You can use several strategies, singly or in combination, to back up vRealize Automation system components. For virtual machines (VMs), you can use the Snapshot function to create snapshot images of critical components or use tools like Veritas NetBackup and EMC Avamar. If a system failure occurs, you can use these images to restore components to their state when the images were created. Alternatively, and for non-virtual machine components, you can create copies of critical configuration files for system components, which can be used to restore these components to a customer configured state following reinstallation.

A complete backup includes the following components:

  • vRealize Automation 7.x
  • IaaS components
    • Proxy Agents
    • DEM Workers
    • DEM Orchestrator
    • Manager Services
    • Web sites
  • vRealize Automation appliance
  • PostgreSQL database. Applicable only for legacy installations that do not use an embedded appliance database
  • Infrastructure MSSQL database
  • Load balancers that support your distributed deployment. Consult the vendor documentation for your load balancer for information about backup considerations

Guidelines for Planning Backups of vRealize Automation

Use the following guidelines to plan backups:

  • When you back up a complete system, back up all instances of the vRealize Automation appliance and databases as near simultaneously as possible, preferably within seconds.
  • Minimize the number of active transactions before you begin a backup. Schedule your regular backup to when your system is least active.
  • Back up all databases at the same time.
  • When you back up the vRealize Automation appliance and the IaaS components, disable in-memory snapshots and quiesced snapshots.
  • Create a backup of instances of the vRealize Automation appliance and the IaaS components when you update certificates.