DavidRing.ie

A very cool feature available from within the vCSA VAMI is the capability to schedule file-level backups (v.important admin task imo). This procedure can be used with both embedded vCenter and also PSC if external, so you may need to configure on multiple appliances depending on your vCenter architectures. Backup protocols supported are:

• HTTP
• HTTPS
• FTP
• FTPS
• SCP

There are multiple tools available such as filezilla to use as a target server for the backups, in this example we create an FTP site from within IIS Manager on Windows 2016:

Provide a site name and the target path used for the FTP backups:

Bind to the IP and chose the required SSL config:

Select an authentication method, here we specify a windows local user ‘David’:

Next login to the vCSA VAMI, click on the Backup tab -> Configure this will bring up the backup schedule window (you can also chose the Backup Now option to create one time backup):

Enter the following details:

• FTP Site Location
• User credentials
• Schedule
• Retention

Now that the scheduled backup is created we can click the Backup Now option and select our pre-created schedule to kick off a one time backup instantly:

Enter user password and provide a description:

Expand the backup to monitor progress:

View the backup files from the FTP location:

In order to restore vCSA using these backups, open the vcsa-ui-installer and follow the Restore wizard!: