Backup

Creating a backup of the appliance will be done using SSH or the console.

  1. Launch appliance_console
    1. Select Create Database Backup and choose a backup location (/tmp/evm_db.backup is the default)
    2. Select Quit to return to the shell
  2. For convenience, create a TGZ containing all files required to restore the database 
      tar -czvf /root/backup.tgz /tmp/evm_db.backup /var/www/miq/vmdb/GUID /var/www/miq/vmdb/certs/v2_key
  3. Save and/or rename /root/backup.tgz

Scheduling Database Backups

Scheduling a database backup using crontab and pg_dump. This example will create a backup file in /tmp named something like db_dump20231009T145028.dump. Before adding the cron job it would be best practice to mount an external storage and adjust the example accordingly.

  1. SSH into the appliance and edit the root user crontab crontab -e
  2. Press i to insert and add a line with the desired schedule to run the backup job. Examples: 
      # Every hour on the hour
  0 * * * * pg_dump -Fc vmdb_production > /tmp/db_dump$(date +\%Y\%m\%dT\%H\%M\%S).dump
  # Every day at midnight
  0 0 * * * pg_dump -Fc vmdb_production > /tmp/db_dump$(date +\%Y\%m\%dT\%H\%M\%S).dump
  # Every week at midnight on Sunday
  0 0 * * 0 pg_dump -Fc vmdb_production > /tmp/db_dump$(date +\%Y\%m\%dT\%H\%M\%S).dump
  3. Press Esc to exit insert mode then :wq and hit Enter to write and quit. If successful, it will output crontab: installing new crontab
  4. Done. If needed, logs can be found at /var/log/cron

Restore

Restoring a backup of the appliance will be done using SSH or the console.

  1. Set the hostname on the new appliance. On the command line: 
      hostnamectl hostname your-new-hostname.example.com
  echo "your.ip.address your-new-hostname.example.com your-new-hostname" >> /etc/hosts
  2. Download a backup TGZ and place it in /
  3. On the command line: 
      cd /
  tar -zxf /backup.tgz
  rm -f /backup.tgz # if desired to save space
  4. Launch appliance_console
    1. Since the database has not yet been initialized, select Configure Application.
      1. When prompted to configure the database, select Create Internal Database
      2. When prompted to configure messaging, either connect to an external messaging system or configure this appliance as a messaging server
      3. Choose a database disk
      4. Answer y or n to “Should this appliance run as a standalone database server?”
      5. Enter a region number (0), this is not important and will be overwritten on restore
      6. Set a database password
      7. Wait for database initialization to complete.
    2. Select Stop EVM Server Processes
    3. Select Restore Database From Backup
      • Decide whether you want to delete the backup file in /tmp after restore. (Yes)
    4. Select Start EVM Server Processes
  5. After a few minutes, you can log into the web UI and see all of the data contained in the backup.