Connecting and managing cluster connections

The Topology page displays the clusters' connections.

From the Topology you can do the following actions:

Connect clusters

  1. In the Backup & Restore menu, click Topology.
  2. In the Topology page, click Connect clusters.
  3. In the Connection method window, select Use the Fusion UI or Automate deployment.
    Table 1. Cluster connection options
    Option Procedure
    Use the Fusion UI
    1. On your hub cluster, go to the > Topology.
    2. Click Connect clusters.
    3. Select Use the Fusion UI. The connect your cluster > Use the Fusion UI window appears. The YAML starts to generate.
    4. After the YAML is generated successfully, click Copy snippet.
    5. Go to the Spoke cluster and install IBM Storage Fusion.
    6. Go to the Services page and install Backup & Restore Agent.
    7. Paste the copied snippet to proceed with the agent install.
    Note: If you use a custom namespace, then do not use the Copy command because the encoded command is not editable and is of no value with a custom namespace.
    Automate deployment To connect multiple Spoke clusters:
    1. On your hub cluster, go to the > Topology.
    2. Click Connect clusters.
    3. Select Automate deployment. The connect your cluster > Automate deployment window appears.
    4. Select the storage class to use on the spoke where you want to run the YAML.
    5. Click Generate.

      The YAML starts to generate. Here, you can either use the Deploy using YAML or Deploy using oc command option.

    6. In the Deploy using YAML option, copy or download the YAML.
    7. Apply the YAML on each of the Spoke clusters.

Actions on a cluster record

The Topology page lists the hub cluster and all spoke connections.
Element or section Description or action
Cluster list The Clusters table has the following columns:
  • Name

    The name of the cluster.

  • Type

    Is it a hub or spoke cluster?

  • Connection status

    The connection status to the remote cluster as seen by the current cluster. It has connected or disconnected values.

  • Service status

    The Backup & Restore Service status. It includes Normal, Critical, Unknown, Degraded, Update available, and Updating values.

  • Version

    The version of the remote cluster's Backup & Restore service.

  • Backed up apps

    Ratio of the number of applications backed up with policies on the cluster versus the total number of applications on the cluster.

  • Success rate

    Success rate is the backup success rate. Anything less than 98% is a warning and anything less than 95% is a failure.
Search records See Search for connections.
Actions on a connection record
Click the ellipsis overflow menu of a record and select any of the following actions:
  • View details

    A pane opens with the details of the cluster, namely Connection status, Service status, Job queue, any critical issues, and Backup success rate. You can also click View backed up apps in this pane to view applications that are local to a specific cluster.

  • View backed up apps

    View applications that are local to a specific cluster. The assumption here is that you assigned policies for these applications on the spoke.

  • Remove connection

    See Remove connections

Search for connections

You can search the records by using any of the following methods:
  • Sort the records by using the Type column
  • Filter records based on Connection or Service.
  • Enter keywords in the Search text to search the table.

Remove connections

You can search and remove connections.

From the Hub cluster, you can remove a Spoke or Agent cluster connection.
Note: The Backup & Restore service operations stops after the removal, however, all backups that are associated with this cluster remain available until they expire.
If the selected cluster is involved in a Regional DR, remove the Regional DR configuration before you remove the connection to the selected cluster.

If you remove the connection from the user interface, it removes the connection on both hub and spoke for that spoke. On the hub, there exists a connection for every spoke, so you must only remove the connection for the spoke to be uninstalled. There exists only one connection on the spoke or agent and hence you can remove it from the agent side safely. When you remove the connection on one cluster, the action removes it from both clusters.

Remove the connection first and then uninstall the agent.
  1. Search for a connection.
  2. From the ellipsis overflow menu of a connection record, click Remove connection.

    A Remove connection confirmation window is displayed.

  3. Click Remove
    A notification appears to confirm the successful removal of the connection. The cluster is not available in the table after the successful removal. From the removed Agent user interface, the following banner notification is displayed: 
    Unmanaged service The Backup & Restore Agent's connection to the Hub cluster has been removed.

Alternatively, if you want to remove the connection from the hub side by using the oc delete connection command and more than one connection exists, then view the YAML and confirm the connected host that you want to remove.

If you want to remove the connection using oc commands, run the following commands: 
oc get connection

NAME                    AGE
connection-7d9a76ce09   25h

oc delete connection connection-7d9a76ce09

connection.application.isf.ibm.com "connection-7d9a76ce09" deleted