Managing backup data on remote systems

As you perform system level and component level backups, you might need to periodically manage the data on your remote systems.

Over time, as you perform scheduled and on demand backups of your data, you might need to perform some general pruning and cleanup of backup data if it is no longer needed, or if you need to provide for additional space for future backups. You should have an understanding of how the backup data is stored and organized, so you can manage it effectively.

The Backup Locations table, accessed from the Backup and Restore page of the console, provides host name and directory path information to indicate where backup data is being stored. You should have local or remote (SSH) access to these systems to manage your backup data as needed.

To access backup and restore functions, you must have all of the following user roles and permissions:

Workload resources administration with Manage workload resources (Full permission)
Cloud group administration with Manage cloud resources (Full permission)
Hardware administration with Manage hardware resources (Full permission)
Security administration with Manage security (Full permission)

Each backup location in the Backup Locations table specifies either the fully qualified host name or IP address of the remote system where backup data is stored. After you have successfully signed into this remote system using valid credentials, you can navigate to the directory path specified in the Path column of the Backup Locations table.

This directory path can be shared by one or more Cloud Pak System System racks, each with its own unique rack ID. The rack ID consists of the model type (example: 8283) and the system serial number (example: 1001234), formatted as 82831001234. Data that is backed up from each rack is written to its own unique directory, using the rack ID as the directory name. For example, there might be two different racks, with rack IDs of 82831000236 and 82831000257, both sharing the same backup location path, /mnt/xiv_storage/backups. The directory structure might look similar to the following example:

/mnt/xiv_storage/backups/82831000236
/mnt/xiv_storage/backups/82831000257

Under each rack ID directory, the system level or component level backup data from that rack is stored separately from other racks sharing the same backup location path. When you first perform a backup operation, additional folders are created under the rack ID directory:

5.0.0.0: This folder contains system level backup data for IBM Workload Deployer. The folder name represents the version of IBM Workload Deployer.
backupSecurity: This folder contains the user-specified certificate and private key files that are used to encrypt the backed up data. Note that you still must also have access to the internal Platform System Manager key information to decrypt the backed up data during restore operations.
backupStorage: This folder contains the details of the system level and component level backup data. See the related topics for more information about how this backup data is organized under this folder.