vWAAS backup / restore best practice

[tumbulina]

Hi,

We are currently deploying vWAAS devices in our Data Center, on ESXi platform. When I'm searching for maintenance documentation, it is always about WAE devices and not the vWAAS.

What is the best way to do a backup of the vWAAS. And what should  I backup ? The configuration only ? In case of a crash, should we re-install the OVA ? I think a backup of the virtual machine itself is not possible (because of the disk size)

I have also read that the cms database contains all the WAAS configuration. So, if we do a cms  database configuration backuo, would it be enough to restore the vCM (our central manger is also virtual)?

Thank you.

Regards,

Maria G.

[finn.poulsen · Accepted solution]

Hi Maria,

The CMS database is only present on the Central manager (here vCM) and this should be backuped (by using the CMS database backup command and exported out of the box/vm)!

The database does not contain all the configuration as there are some smaller CLI config (IP addresses etc) - perform a show run to save those out of the box/vm.

You could take a VMware snapshot of the vCM (which should have a huge disk size) in order to be able to make a faster restore. But be aware that VMware snapshots migth affect performance.

Otherwise you could :

1. re-install the ova image (beware if you have change the WAAS SW version)
2. re-apply the CLI
3. restore the cms database backup

and everything should be running again.

For the application optimizer vWAAS the content of the different caches will be lost if reinstalling vWAAS, but restoring these from a snapshot migth not be feasible.

so re-apply the CLI (without the policies) and the policies will be retreived from the vCM, if you have set this up.

Best Regards

Finn