Backing up and Restoring VCSA

Backup steps

• Log into the VCSA appliance screen. In my case https://192.168.1.106:5480
• Select Backup from the Summary Screen

• Put in the backup details. As a test I have set up a Filezilla FTP server on a Windows box to use as my backup location

You can choose to optionally encrypt the backup with a password. This uses AES256 encryption

• Click Next and it will validate the inputs

• Choose what to backup

• Click Next and Complete the Backup

• The Backup should run and complete successfully

• Check the backup files exist in the ftp directory you specified

Restoring a VCSA 6.5 appliance

The one thing to remember is that is my lab environment. I am going to power off and unregister my current VCSA to simulate that there has been an unrecoverable failure as I am going to need to restore an identical named and IP addressed machine. Obviously you can’t have 2 VMs registered with the same name in the inventory or the same IP address so I have temporarily shutdown and unregistered my current VCSA.

• Mount the vCSA installer ISO and run installer.exe from \vcsa-ui-installer\win32 assuming you’re running this on Windows.
• Click Restore

• The Restore Wizard will start and you will see the below screen
• Click Next

• Accept the License Agreement

• Fill in the details for the backup file

• Check the details

• Click Next
• Put in the host details for deploying the new VCSA

• Accept the Certificate

• Set up the target appliance VM

• Set the deployment size

• Select the datastore to restore to. In my case I have a vSAN or a Local datastore to restore to

• Enter the IP Address details.

• Click Next
• Check the Details and click Ready to Complete

• It will say initializing

• It will finally complete and should say

• Click Continue

• Check the details

• Complete the second stage of the restore

• Take note of the warning

• The restore should start

• Once the restore has fully finished, you should see the below screen

• Check the host for the newly restored VCSA