Something new that I wanted to talk about in Cloud Director 10.3.1 is the ability to take a backup of the Cloud Director appliance from the appliance management interface. This backup can then be used to restore the primary appliance. In this post I will run through how it all works!

To get started log into the appliance – https://cloud-director-ip:5480 as the root user.

Select Backup and click on Backup Now

Once complete you will see the newly created backup file. These files are saved in the following location on the appliance,
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/backups

One important thing to confirm is the current transfer share you have configured in Cloud Director. One quick way to check that is to ssh into your existing Cloud Director cell and run cat /etc/fstab to check the location it was mounted. Take note of this location.

So my transfer share is mounted to 192.168.1.3:/vcloud in my lab.

Now that we have created our backup and confirmed the transfer share we are using it’s time to redeploy the primary database cell.

Switch over to vCenter and select Deploy OVF Template and then click on Upload Files and locate your Cloud Director 10.3.1 ova file. Once complete click NEXT

Enter a name for the virtual machine and click NEXT

Select your compute resource and click NEXT

Review the details and click NEXT

Accept the License Agreement and click NEXT

Choose your deployment configuration and click NEXT. For this example I am going to use Primary – small.

Select your datastore and click NEXT

Assign a destination network for eth0 and eth1 and click NEXT

Complete the deployment parameters and click NEXT. Basic examples given below.

Review your settings and click FINISH

Once complete power up the new Cloud Director cell and log into the appliance management interface as the root user – https://cloud-director-ip:5480

Select Restore from Backup on the left hand menu and enter the NFS mount address we checked earlier. Then click NEXT

Select the backup file you would like to restore and click NEXT

Enter the NFS mount point for the transfer share and click RESTORE

NOTE – This can be the same transfer share mount point or a new one.

Once the restore has completed click CLOSE

That’s it your Cloud Director cell will now be back online. From here you can deploy any required application cells.

NOTE – If your cell comes back up and your certificate wasn’t originally referenced from the transfer share you can use the following post to replace the certificate!

@steveonofaro

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