Backup and Restore of VCenter Appliance

[NagarajN]

Hello All,

We have moved our VCenter from Windows based client to Appliance Version. I was trying to find documents related to Backup and Restore of VCenter Appliance using Netbackup and was not able to find any. Can someone who has already worked on this can share if there is an article which explaines the backup and restore of VCenter appliance?

We are using Netbackup 8.2 Version and VCenter appliance 6.5 and 6.7.

Thanks in advance.

[Systems_Team]

Hi NagarajN,

We have looked into this for our environment, but haven't implemented a backup as yet.  As VCenter is now an appliance, you can't install a NetBackup agent as you would have done previously.  You perform a backup using the VCenter appliance tools.  In 6.7 this can be scheduled, apparently in 6.5 it cannot and you need to run the backup manually.

According to the doco, "The backed-up data is streamed over FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SFTP, NFS, or SMB to a remote system. The backup is not stored on the vCenter Server.".  You would stream this data to a client that already has a NetBackup agent installed, and then perform a normal filesystem backup through NetBackup.  Here's a couple of links that should help get you started:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vcenter.install.doc/GUID-3EAED005-B0A3-40CF... 

https://www.vembu.com/blog/vmware-vcsa-6-7-appliance-backup/ 

Hope this helps,

Steve

[Tape_Archived]

I would recommend to backup your vCenter using NetBackup VMware policy. Using this policy type NetBackup will ask VMware to trigger a sanpshot of the vCenter applaince. This backup the entire vCenter as a VM. You can easily restore the entire vCenter appliance and recover it. You have to plan and test this so that you know what will be your recovery approach.

[vtas_chas]

My understanding of the VMware documentation is that they don't support this as a method.  The only supported methods are the ones Systems_Team posted in their reply.  While you might be able to make it work, that's different than it being supported, and with something as important as the VCSA, I don't think you'd want to take a chance.

Just my $.02.