HP OneView Backing up an appliance, Overview of the backup process, Backup file name, Backups

21 Backing up an appliance

This chapter describes how to use the UI, REST APIs, or a custom-written PowerShell script to save your appliance resource configuration settings and management data to a backup file.

IMPORTANT: HP recommends backing up your appliance configuration on a regular basis, preferably daily, and especially after adding hardware or changing the appliance configuration in the unlikely event you need to restore the appliance.

21.1 Overview of the backup process

HP OneView provides the ability to save your configuration settings and management data to an encrypted backup file and enables you to use that backup to restore a corrupted appliance in the event of a catastrophic failure.

The backup process involves creating a backup file and then downloading that file to a secure off-appliance location for future use.

The appliance stores only one backup file at a time. Creating each subsequent backup file replaces the current backup file. To prevent a backup file from being overwritten by a new backup file, download and save the backup file to an off-appliance location before running the next backup process.

CAUTION: Do not use any hypervisor-provided capabilities or snapshots to back up an appliance because doing so can cause synchronization errors and result in unpredictable and unwanted behavior.

UI screens and REST API resources

UI screen	REST API resource
Settings→Actions	backups

For more information about backing up an appliance, see the online help for the Settings screen.

21.2 Roles

Users with Infrastructure administrator and Backup administrator privileges can create and download backup files, however, only the Infrastructure administrator can restore an appliance from a backup file.

The Backup administrator has the authority to use scripts to log in to the appliance and run scripts to back up the appliance. This role is specifically intended for scripted backup creation and download. HP recommends that users with this role should not initiate interactive login sessions through the HP OneView user interface.

21.3 Backup file name

The backup file name has the following format:

appliance-host-name_backup_yyyy-mm-dd_hhmmss.bkp

Example

myhost_backup_2013–10–01_092700.bkp

In this example, the backup file was created for the appliance host name myhost on October 1, 2013, at 9:27 a.m.

21.1 Overview of the backup process 149