IBM Cloud Pak System

IBM Cloud Pak System Disaster Recovery Management

 
IBM® Cloud Pak System is a system to help manage your resources in a cloud-computing environment.

This tutorial focuses on how you can work with backup and restore in IBM Cloud Pak System. The disaster recovery in IBM Cloud Pak System is broadly categorized as follows:

• Backup and Restore:
  1. System/Full backup and restore
  2. Component level backup and restore
     1. Workload Component backup and restore
     2. Cloud Component backup and restore

• Security Component backup and restore

• High Availability (HA):
  1. Cloud Groups HA
  2. Compute node HA

In this blog, the focus is on the procedure about the backup and recovery module which is a prevention feature in disaster recovery management to protect IBM Cloud Pak System against data loss.

Backup server configuration:

For backup server, take any virtual machine or server with a minimum of 1 TB of storage (depending on requirement) available on a specific mount point (any folder in File system).

Make sure that the virtual machine or server is accessible from IBM Cloud Pak System with no network issues.

Do these steps to configure a backup server:

1. Log in to the IBM Cloud Pak System user interface with the system credentials.
2. From the navigation menu on the IBM Cloud Pak System user interface, click System -> Backup and Restore to open the “Backup and Restore” page. See the following figure for reference:

 

3. Click the Change button to add or edit the backup server. See the following figure for reference:

4. On the “Set backup location” window, click the Create new See the following figure for reference:

4. Provide the following details to add a backup server or location:

• Name: A unique name to identify in IBM Cloud Pak System for the backup location.
• Hostname: IP address or hostname of backup server.
• Path: Mount path where the backup data is to be stored on the backup server.
• Port: Port number to access the backup server. By default, it is 22.
• Username: The username to access the backup server.
• Authentication type: They are of two types, one is the password authentication and the second one is via the “Private key” (preferred method), to access the backup server.
• Encryption: [Optional] Enable the check box if data stored in the backup server to be encrypted.

6. Click the Save button to add the backup server location on IBM Cloud Pak System. See the following figure for reference:

Note: If Encryption checkbox is enabled, provide the necessary settings for private key.

7. Click the Close button after the backup location is saved.

 

Backup profile creation:

 

Do these steps to create a backup profile:

1. Log in to the IBM Cloud Pak System user interface with the system credentials.
2. From the navigation menu on the IBM Cloud Pak System user interface, click System -> Backup and Restore to open the “Backup and Restore” page. See the following figure for reference:

 

 

3. Under “Backup Configurations”, click the Create new See the following figure for reference:

4. Provide the following details to create a backup profile:

• Name: A name of the backup profile.
• Location: Select the backup location from the list. Select the location that we created earlier in the “Backup server configuration” section.
• Type: Select the backup type: System backup (Full backup) or Component backup (Custom backup).
• Backup: Select a backup: On demand or Scheduled to trigger the backup.

 

See the following figure for reference:

5. Click the Close button, and the backup profile will be auto-saved.

 

Scheduling backups:

 

Do these steps to schedule backups:

1. Once the backup profile is created, select the backup profile and click the Backup now See the following figure for reference:

 

2. Click Problem Determination -> Job Queue to check the backup progress on the “Job Queue” page. See the following figure for reference:

 

Restore procedure:

 

Once the backups are successful with the On demand or Scheduled options or if the System or Components options need to be restored to the previous state, do these steps:

 

1. Log in to the IBM Cloud Pak System user interface with the system credentials.
2. From the navigation menu on the IBM Cloud Pak System user interface, click System -> Backup and Restore to open the “Backup and Restore” page. See the following figure for reference:

 

3. Under the “Restore” section, select the backup location from the Location table to which the backup profile is linked.
4. Click the Restore data See the following figure for reference:

5. From the “Restore Configuration“ popup window, select System restore or Component restore in the Security tab according to the backup that is triggered.
6. Expand User groups and select the components that you want to restore. See the following figure for reference:

 

7. Click the Restore
8. In the popup window that is displayed, provide the password which was given while creating the backup location under “Backup location”.
9. Click the Close
10. Click Problem Determination -> Job Queue to check the restore progress on the “Job Queue” page.

With these steps, you will have successfully understood about working with the backup and restore operation for IBM Cloud Pak System Disaster Recovery Management.

Below is the link for the limitations : (under Backup/Restore section)

https://ibmdocs-test.mybluemix.net/docs/en/cloudpaksystem/2.3.3?topic=support-known-issues-limitations
Note:  CPS backup and restore does not backup individual instances data

Acknowledgements : 

Like to thank the reviewer's for the blog Hina Sharma , Anil Kumar Hegde and Vasanth Raghavan 

About the Author:
Naga Padma Ganesh Divvela, Senior Software Engineer , working on IBM Cloud Pak System. Reach out at ndivvel1@in.ibm.com