Backup and restore vCenter appliance (Photon OS)

Summary

You can perform a cold backup of the vCenter appliance in LinuxBE due to its unique disk layout. However, bare metal recovery is not permitted.

Backup

Start LinuxBE and initiate the backup task using the graphical user interface (GUI).

Restore

Overwriting recovery is permitted for specific reasons, but bare metal recovery is not allowed.

The reasons why bare metal recovery is not allowed

In the vCenter appliance, the root partition is typically on an LVM-configured disk. Other disks are also LVM-configured, but the Partition Table is left unconfigured. During AIP restoration, formatting relies on Partition Table information. Since the Partition Table isn't configured, formatting can't proceed, resulting in the failure of the restore process during bare metal recovery due to layout creation issues.

Workaround

If the vCenter appliance is not bootable, follow these steps to restore.

1) Deploy new appliance

2) Boot vCenter appliance on LinuxBE and perform overwrite restore

Target Product

- ActiveImage Protector 2022 Linux

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