Setting the Cloud Pak for Data OADP backup and restore mode

Important: IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.6 will reach end of support (EOS) on 31 July, 2025. For more information, see the Discontinuance of service announcement for IBM Cloud Pak for Data Version 4.X.

Upgrade to IBM Software Hub Version 5.1 before IBM Cloud Pak for Data Version 4.6 reaches end of support. For more information, see Upgrading IBM Software Hub in the IBM Software Hub Version 5.1 documentation.

You can run the Cloud Pak for Data OpenShift® APIs for Data Protection (OADP) backup and restore utility in Kubernetes mode or in REST mode.

About this task

By default, the Cloud Pak for Data OADP backup and restore utility runs in Kubernetes mode. In this mode, you must log in to your Red Hat® OpenShift cluster and you must have Kubernetes cluster administrator privileges to use the utility.

If you installed the Cloud Pak for Data OADP backup REST service, cpdbr-api, you can run the utility in REST mode to create backups. In REST mode, the utility runs as a REST client that communicates to a REST server. cpdbr-api is configured to work with a specific Cloud Pak for Data instance. You do not have to log in to the cluster, and Cloud Pak for Data users with the Administrator role can run backup and checkpoint commands on their own Cloud Pak for Data instances, based on the specified Cloud Pak for Data control plane and any tethered projects.

Important: Restore operations must always be run in Kubernetes mode by a cluster administrator.

Running the utility in REST mode is useful when you are generally creating backups only, or when backups take a long time to complete. For backups that take a long time to complete, running the utility in REST mode avoids the problem of the Red Hat OpenShift user session token expiring before the backup process completes. If the session token expires, you must log back in to the cluster and reset the utility. For more information, see Unable to run an online backup or restore operation.

Note: The output format of CLI commands that are run in REST mode are different than CLI commands that are run in Kubernetes mode.

Procedure

To set the Cloud Pak for Data OADP backup and restore utility to the REST mode, run the following command:
```
cpd-cli oadp client config set runtime-mode=rest-client
```
To set the Cloud Pak for Data OADP backup and restore utility back to the Kubernetes mode, run the following command:
```
cpd-cli oadp client config set runtime-mode=
```