Back up procedures

In a clustered environment, we cannot use VMWare snapshots to back up your virtual machines. For reliable backups, use appliance snapshots to back up the cluster.

We can complete an appliance snapshot on each cluster member to effectively back up the cluster. An appliance snapshot of the primary master includes all of the cluster configuration and runtime data. When the primary master is restored from an appliance snapshot, it updates every cluster member with the restored configuration.

An appliance snapshot of a node other than the primary master excludes the runtime database information. When a cluster member is restored from a snapshot, it contacts the primary master to obtain up-to-date configuration and runtime information.

To effectively back up the cluster, complete an appliance snapshot of the primary master after any change to the cluster configuration. For example, take a snapshot after we add or remove a node to ensure the correct nodes are included in the cluster after a restore.

Parent topic: Cluster maintenance