Sourcefire virtual appliance and VMware snapshots

[owensr_cisco]

Hello,

Found the following in a 5.4.1 version appliance installation guide

Guidelines and Limitations
The following limitations exist when deploying virtual Defense Center or devices on VMware:

• vMotion is not supported.
• Cloning a virtual machine is not supported.
• Restoring a virtual machine with a snapshot is not supported.
• Restoring a backup is not supported.

My questions are:

Does this mean that appliance VMware snapshots made will not be able to be reverted to?

Also that cloning in VMware will not work?

Will reverting to snapshots and cloning in VMware work with older version (4.10) virtual defense centers?

How is one to make a backup of the virtual appliance VM in event of crashes, corruption, etc.?

Thanks.

[Jetsy Mathew]

Hello ,

Regarding your questions ,

1) Does this mean that appliance VMware snapshots made will not be able to be reverted to?

We basically dont support these. Especially if these causes any kind of performance issues or errors , then the BU wont be able to support this.

2) Also that cloning in VMware will not work?

Again the same is not supported if this ends up in some kind of database corruption issues.

3) Will reverting to snapshots and cloning in VMware work with older version (4.10) virtual defense centers?

The version 4.10 itself is out of support from a long time. If possible please upgrade to the latest available as it has lot of  new features added . If you dont have any backup left then you can do it . But if this starts causing any kind of database corruption then we wont be able to get the help from the Escalation teams.

4) How is one to make a backup of the virtual appliance VM in event of crashes, corruption, etc.?

Always keep a backup of the FMC using the desired method mentioned in the user guide for FMC.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/firepower/60/configuration/guide/fpmc-config-guide-v60/Backup_and_Restore.html

Rate if this answer helps you.

Regards

Jetsy 

[owensr_cisco]

Jetsy,

Thanks very much.for information.  

A couple followups.

So I undersand:

-The snapshot reversion (and cloning too) will "work", i.e., not be prohibited as an option,  but in the event any issues occur, be unsupported for v5 and v6 FMC.?

-For the older v4 FMC these are more likely to work, but again in event of error not be supported?

Also, to do a restore as described in the link provided, you need to be able to login to the FMC. What if FMC is in a state where this is not possible, is reversion snapshot valid option then?  

Finally, will such a backup made when things were working correct an issue where the FMC CLI admin password has stopped working or is locked out for some reason? Or is that outside the boundaries of what is in the restore file?