HP Insight Control Server Provisioning 7.2 Administrator Guide

3 Backing up and restoring your appliance
3.1 Overview
Insight Control server provisioning provides services to back up and restore an appliance. If an
appliance is lost or corrupted, it might be necessary to restore the appliance from a backup.
A backup contains configuration settings and management data and is stored in a file of proprietary
format.
REST APIs and sample scripts are provided to perform backup and restore operations. Sample
scripts are available on the Insight Control server provisioning media and in the product download
zip file.
A backup can be restored on the same appliance or on a different appliance than the one from
which the backup was created. If an appliance fails and cannot be repaired, a backup can be
restored on a replacement appliance.
To successfully restore a backup, the appliance must be running a version of the firmware that is
compatible with the backup. Versions are compatible if the first two components of the version
number are the same.
During a restore, the appliance firmware reconciles the data in the backup with the current state
of the managed environment. There are some discrepancies that restore cannot resolve automatically.
After a restore completes, the appliance administrator manually resolves any remaining
inconsistencies, which are presented as alerts.
CAUTION: Restoring a backup replaces all management data and most configuration settings
on the appliance. The appliance is not operational during a restore. It can take several hours to
perform a restore. A restore cannot be cancelled or undone once it has started. If a nonrecoverable
error occurs during a restore, you will have to download a new appliance template as described
in the HP Insight Control Server Provisioning Installation Guide, available at http://www.hp.com/
go/insightcontrol/docs. Restore should only be used to recover from catastrophic failures; it should
not be used for minor problems that can be resolved in other ways.
3.2 Creating and downloading an appliance backup
3.2.1 Recommended backup procedures
HP recommends regular backups, preferably once a day. Backups are taken while the appliance
is in use and normal activity is taking place. It is not necessary to wait for tasks to stop before
creating a backup. A backup is restored by uploading it onto the appliance and then requesting
the appliance restore from the backup.
A backup should be performed before and after updating the appliance firmware.
HP recommends using an enterprise backup/restore product such as HP Data Protector to archive
backup files. REST APIs are provided for integration with enterprise backup/restore products.
After a backup is taken, the backup file must be downloaded from the appliance and stored in a
safe place. The backup file must be downloaded before the next backup is performed to prevent
it being overwritten by the next backup.
Only one backup can run at a time.
The backup file name has the format:
<appliance host name>_backup_<yyyy-mm-dd_hhmmss>.bkp
For example: myhost_backup_2012–10–01_092700.bkp. In this example the backup was
created for the appliance host name myhost on October 1, 2012 at 9:27 a.m.
3.1 Overview 13