Ask Me Anything - Cisco Catalyst Centre Backup and Restore

[Brooke Hammer]

Ask Me Anything Event

Welcome to the Cisco Community Ask Me Anything conversation. Submit your questions from  Monday, February 24, 2025  through Friday, March 7, 2025. Our colleagues Kalyan Raja and Janardhan, will be waiting to assist you and resolve any questions that have not been clarified, or answer any new questions that you may have. We are waiting for you!

More about this event:

Join us for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event where you can dive deep into Cisco Catalyst Centre Backup and Restore!

What is it?

Cisco Catalyst Centre Back up and Restore is a component of Cisco's Catalyst Center (formerly DNA) You can use the backup and restore functions to create backup files to restore to a different appliance

Backup

You can back up automation data only or both automation and Assurance data.

Automation data consists of Cisco DNA Center databases, credentials, file systems, and files. The automation backup is a full backup.

The Assurance data consists of network assurance and analytics data. The first backup of Assurance data is a full backup. After that, backups are incremental.

Restore

You can restore the backup files from the remote server using Cisco DNA Center.

When you restore the backup files, Cisco DNA Center removes and replaces the existing database and files with the backup database and files. While a restore is being performed, Cisco DNA Center is unavailable.

You cannot do a backup from one version of Cisco DNA Center and restore it to another version of Cisco DNA Center. You can only restore a backup to an appliance that is running the same Cisco DNA Center software release with the same first four digits and the same application versions as the appliance from which the backup was taken.

Official resources:

Backup on on-prem

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/dna-center/2-3-7/admin_guide/b_cisco_dna_center_admin_guide_2_3_7/b_cisco_dna_center_admin_guide_2_3_7_chapter_0110.html

Backup on EXSI

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/catalyst-center/catalyst-center-va/esxi/2-3-7/Admin_Guide/b_cisco_catalyst_center_va_esxi_admin_guide_237x/m_cisco_dna_center_va_esxi_admin_backup_restor...

Backup on AWS

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/catalyst-center/catalyst-center-va/aws/admin-guide/1_9/b_cisco-global-launchpad-administrator-guide_1-9/m_backup_and_restore.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw3lCrW7xr8

Get Expert Advice!

• This AMA session is your chance to get expert insights on this powerful feature.
• Whether you're a seasoned network pro or just starting out, feel free to ask any questions you have about Backup and Restore, image repository or Cisco Catalyst Center in general.

Join us for this insightful Ask Me Anything session and gain valuable insights into the world of Cisco Catalyst Center Backup and re-store. Let's uncover the solutions to your challenges and explore the vast possibilities in this dynamic field.

Note: Please post your post as a comment below no later than March 6, 2025.

Post your question below by clicking "Reply"

(Answers will be processed depending on the availability of the experts)
Don't forget to thank the expert by giving it a helpful vote!

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Our experts

Janardhana Technical Consulting Engineer

Kalyan Raja Technical Consulting Engineer

For more information, visit the Cisco Networking discussion forums . If you have questions or are experiencing technical problems with any of the Cisco products, post your question, request information or use the Cisco Community before opening a case with the TAC.

[Vaibhav Supugade]

Hi Team,

We are replacing the Gen-1 DN1-HW-APL appliance with the Gen-3 DN3-HW-APL appliance. The current version of DNAC is 2.3.7.6.

Could you please advise on the process to restore the backup from the Gen-1 appliance to the Gen-3 appliance? We are configuring NFS as the backup storage.

[kalraja]

After taking the backup from the GEN-1 Appliance, we need to input the same Linux server IP address and the directory where the backup is stored in Gen-3 appliance.

Upon entering the same configuration path as that of the GEN-1 appliance, the restore option should become visible. By selecting this option, the backup will be restored.

Important considerations during the backup restoration process include:

1. The DNAC version must be identical, regardless of the appliance Version.

2. All applications present on the current DNAC must also correspond with those on the DNAC from which the backup is being restored.

[Vaibhav Supugade]

Hi Raja,

Thanks for your response.

Once the backup is restored, will all configurations, such as ISE, IPAM, Meraki integration, and certificates, be present, or will they need to be created manually?

[kalraja]

Yes, we must reintegrate ISE, IPAM and import the new system certificate

[Tomas de Leon]

In addition to what was mentioned, please take a look at the following:

Cisco Catalyst Center Data Migration Guide
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/dna-center/migration_guide/b_data_migration_guide.html

[jeagrawa]

Hello Team,
If we delete the backup from the DNAC GUI, will the files in the indices folder on the server be removed automatically, or do we need to delete them manually? The DNAC version is 2.3.7.6.

[tjanarda]

yes from 2.3.7.6 the indices will be deleted  

[jeagrawa]

If we took the backup from version 2.3.5 and upgraded to version 2.3.7.6, and now if I delete the previous backup, will the indices be deleted? If not, can we manually delete all the previous indices?

[kalraja]

No indicies will not be deleted for backup 2.3.5.x . We do have script which can help in deleting all the olde indices please do oprn TAC case and we can help in deleting old Indices

[dgoldschmidt]

How can we control the quantity of backups that remain on an on-prem backup server?  There appears to be no way, other than to manually check on occasion, how many backups have completed and if they are successful.  If you fail to manually check and the backup server storage fills up, backups fail and you still have to manually delete the old backups.  There should be a way to automatically delete old backups when quantity of backups exceed 'X'.  This would help prevent failed backups due to storage filling up.

[kalraja]

Currently we don't have any mechanism to limit the number of backup that should be taken from DNAC . So ask of now we need occasionaly check and see if backup server is filling up or not .

Alternatively what we can do is create a cron job in linux server which can help in automatically deleting the backup once it goes beyond time limit

[Tomas de Leon]

Just to clarify further....

For Backup Retention & Automated deletion of older backups...

- In there current releases of the Catalyst Center OnPrem HW (P1.7), Backup Retention (in number of backups) is "not" available.

- In release 2.3.7.4 & later for Catalyst Center on ESXi (P3.0), Backup Retention (in number of backups) is available. You can set the value from 3 to 60 backups and then the janitor cleanup is at 12am each day.

In a future release, both platforms will be a Platform 3.0 which will bring a lot of these features together. For your next question, which release? The will be coming later this year (in 6-8 months). Remember, dates and release numbers for Catalyst Center is always fuid.

So the current method for deleting older or unwanted backups for the Catalyst Center OnPrem HW is to manually delete from the Admin UI one by one. Using scripts or removing backup files on the remote file server is not officially supported and has a potential for error. And this would not be optimal for your production data backups.

[uabbired]

Hi Team,

When i took backup from DNAC it took 5 hours to complete . IS there any way we can find out what was the root cause and how to know what is the bandwidth speed between DNAC and my linux server

[tjanarda]

in df-kh you will be able to see the NFS mount path 

you can navigate to the path "/es/snapshot"  and then execute the below command 

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=1M count=200 status=progress