Backup and Import

Backing Up Cisco UCS Central

Backing up the Cisco UCS Central configuration regularly is essential. Without regular backups, there is no automatic way to reconstruct the mapping of operational policies to domain groups and to subordinate, individual Cisco UCS domains.

Given the small size of a Cisco UCS Central backup (much less than 1 MB), perform a Backup and Configuration Export for UCS Central once a day. Use a Config-All (logical) backup and also the Full-State (db) backup.

Always use remote copy to store your backups off-line from the Cisco UCS Central virtual appliance. You can also schedule Cisco UCS Central backups on a custom-defined schedule.

Backing Up Cisco UCS Domains

Management through Cisco UCS Central does not change the need for creating frequent Cisco UCS backups. It does, however, help simplify and automate individual backup operations.

Define backup and export policies per domain group. Although backup files vary in size, typical backups for individual Cisco UCS domains are ~100 KB, which is small enough to justify frequent backups. (Full-state binary backups are ~ 2-MB.)

Cisco UCS Central maintains original copies of all backups within the Cisco UCS Central appliance. In addition, you can store copies of backups in remote locations.

Consider backing up Cisco UCS daily, using a Config-All (logical) backup. Perform a Full-State backup and Config-All for each UCS domain. You can also schedule Cisco UCS Central backups on a custom-defined schedule.

Domain Backup Limitations

You can configure two kinds of backups for Cisco UCS Central and for domains:

  • Full-state backup—Used for data recovery

  • Configuration Export—XML backup of the logical configuration

Both backups afford the option of performing a remote copy to an FTP server. Remote Copy is highly recommended, on all scheduled backup jobs, to protect backups from loss in a disaster scenario.

You can only import UCS Central backups from a remote file system. Import any remotely stored domain backups through the local Cisco UCS Manager.

Global References in Local Backups

If you back up at the local Cisco UCS Manager level, then these backups do not contain any references to global objects that are managed by Cisco UCS Central.

Within Cisco UCS Central, use backup and export policies with backup operations managed exclusively by Cisco UCS Central. A UCS domain backup, scheduled and driven by Cisco UCS Central, still backs up all local objects in the UCS domain.