Objectives

After completing this section, you should be able to backup and restore a Red Hat Virtualization Manager (RHV-M) server.

Backing Up Red Hat Virtualization Manager

It is important to maintain complete backups of the machine running Red Hat Virtualization Manager, especially when making changes to the configuration of that machine. As part of a backup strategy, the engine-backup utility can be used to back up the RHV-M database and configuration files into a single archive file that can be easily stored.

The engine-backup command will either perform a backup or restore your backup from archive. Further detailing is available with extended parameters.

Consider the following when adding options:

This course uses a standard RHV-M installation running the engine, engine database, and Data Warehouse on the same server. In this case, --scope=all may be the easiest way to create backups. The other scopes are most useful for backing up more complex or advanced RHV-M configurations. Note that you can run engine-backup while RHV-M is running.

When using engine-backup to restore the database from a backup, there are options that may needed:

By using the engine-backup with --mode=backup option, you will create a .tgz (TAR Archive file). The file can be created in a directory using the --file option.

The tar file contains a backup of RHV-M configuration files, the engine database, and the Data Warehouse database. This backup archive should be copied from the RHV-M server to secure storage for later use.

Restoring Red Hat Virtualization Manager

While the process for restoring a backup using the engine-backup command is straightforward, there are several additional steps when compared to the process for creating a backup. The steps required depend on the destination to which the backup will be restored. For example, the engine-backup command can be used to restore backups to fresh installations of Red Hat Virtualization, on top of existing installations of Red Hat Virtualization, and using local or remote databases.

The engine-backup command can be used to restore a backup to a fresh installation of the Red Hat Virtualization Manager. The following procedure must be performed on a machine with the base operating system and required packages for the Red Hat Virtualization Manager have been installed, but the engine-setup command has not yet been run. This procedure assumes that the backup file can be accessed from the machine on which the backup is to be restored.

Consider the following steps in order to restore a backup:

Overwriting a RHV-M Installation

If you have made environment changes to the RHV-M installation since the last backup, you can discard those changes by running an engine-cleanup command. The engine-cleanup prompts for removal of components, stopping the engine service, and removing all installed ovirt data. If you do not want to remove the data, then engine-cleanup will abort.

After cleaning the RHV-M setup from the host server, you can then run the engine-backup command to restore a full backup, or a database only backup. The tables and credentials are already created, so you do not need to create new ones.

You can omit specific databases by leaving out the --scope="database" option when running the engine-backup command. After restoring the database, you must run the engine-setup command again to reconfigure the RHV-M.