VCSA questions

[burvil]

I have the following questions on VCSA:

1. How do I restart services?

2. How would I expand the filesystem?

3. How would I backup/restore the system?

4. How would I backup/restore the database?

5. What is the patching process, e.g. if Vmware finds a bug or vulnerability where we need to upgrade?

6. I've heard conflicting things about using PowerCLI.  Can it be used for VCSA, and if not, what is the equivalent recommended method to automate deployment of VMs, and make large scale changes with the Vcenter?  We sometimes have a lot of changes to make, so I'd like to automate this.

[RyanH84]

Hi,

I'll do my best to answer!

1) You can restart individual services by logging onto the appliance using SSH and restarting them via the command line.

2) You can add disks similar to any VM. There are articles out there on how to create more space for filesystem and database if needed. (Using tools such as Gparted).

3) There are multiple products that backup VM's. Veeam is a good one, which I believe works for the vCSA. Depending on the solution you use, you want to think about backing the vCSA up at a separate time to the VM's running on it!

4) It depends on if you are using the embedded postgres DB or planning on using a seperate Oracle DB. There are KB's from VMware that tell you how. Not sure about Oracle, whatever system you'd have setup for that I guess.

5) There are documented methods from VMware that inform you how to upgrade the vCenter appliance. For example, you might be upgrading from v5.5 u1c to v5.5 u2e. Usually it involves attaching the ISO media to the vCSA appliance and using the admin interface to upgrade.

6) I've got two vCSA's for VDI environments at work. I've used PowerCLI scripts on them both and they work fine.

I hope that helps, if you have any more questions please ask!