Categories of data to be backed up

Management data

The management functions control the whole system, virtualizing the hardware into resources for the cloud environment and providing a runtime environment for the workload functions. These management functions contain setup and configuration state data that must be backed up.

Cloud environment data

The cloud environment is based on the management data, and is defined by creating and configuring cloud components, such as IP groups and cloud groups. It organizes the system's resources as runtime environments into which the workloads can be deployed. This cloud environment data must be backed up separately from the system's management data.

Workload catalog data

The workload catalog contains the individual patterns and their constituent parts as displayed in the console. Workload components are separate from the cloud environment and include virtual images, virtual application patterns and pattern types, virtual system patterns, script packages, plug-ins, and so on. These pattern-level components do not include the deployed pattern instances, but rather the patterns needed to deploy these instances again. The workload catalog also includes environment profiles, which are needed to deploy the patterns into the cloud environment. This workload data must be backed up by exporting it from the system.

After this workload catalog data is exported, you can use this data for multiple purposes besides restoring from the backup. You can store this data in a software configuration management (SCM) system to help manage the software development lifecycle of these components. You can also import this data into another Cloud Pak System Software for Power instance so that both instances are configured with the same patterns. You can also use this data in disaster recovery situations.

Workload data

Workload data includes deployed pattern instances, the contents of the running virtual machines and their relationships. This data, when stored on the system after deploying patterns, can be quite large because the virtual machines are large, the applications often load large amounts of data from their databases, and they maintain a significant amount of session data when they have a large number of concurrent users.

When following standard middleware installation and application deployment practices, if the runtime environment is lost, recreating it can be difficult, time consuming, and error prone. But with Cloud Pak System Software for Power, if an application environment fails, you can easily replace it by redeploying the pattern and redeploying the application into the pattern instance.

Application data

The internal state of each of the applications running as a workload on the system must be backed up. The state is application-specific and typically includes the application's databases, but it can also include the application configuration, application file system, logs, and other key application artifacts.

This type of application data backup has always been needed for applications running in middleware on traditional hardware. For a virtualized application running in Cloud Pak System Software for Power, however, the pattern must include the backup software.