vCloud Director DR/Backup

[tomkivlin]

Hi,

I've been searching in vain for any information on some best practices/guides on how to protect the vCloud Director infrastructure itself, rather than VMs provisioned by vCD.  For example, vCD cells, vSheild VMs etc.

I have read a few articles about using SRM, however that'll only protect against hardware failure won't it? What I'm looking for is some verified information on how to protect against things like DB corruption or if a rogue admin/process deletes the vCD VM etc.

i.e. things like whether a simple DB backup/restore and reboot of the VM is supported (I can test whether it works of course), or whether you can rebuild the vCD VM and point it at an existing database etc.

Does anyone have that sort of information at all?

Thanks,

Tom

[mreferre]

There is work that is being done internally to address this and provide more information on the peculiarity of backing up and restoring the management stack.

Massimo.

[tomkivlin]

Thanks, Massimo

Are there any general recommendations in the meantime?

Thanks,

Tom

[iceman76]

Hi Tom,

for starters i would recommend this article http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/2012/02/overview-of-disaster-recovery-in-vcloud-director.html

And of course it helps to create regular backups and keep thme in a separate location. So if there's a problem with a corrupt database (which got replicated to the DR site already) you would still have the chance to restore the database. Same is valid if one of your admin's has a really bad day and deletes the vCloud Director Cells + Database. But if he has not only a bad day, but wants to harm you, you better have the backups in a location where he has no access to 😉

But it all comes down to one thing : Is your customer is willing to pay what it costs to maintain a infrastructure that provides such features.