When thinking about a data protection solution that covers the modern SDDC, organizations must think about providing backups of their software defined networking solutions as well. In the VMware vSphere world, NSX is at the core of the SDDC components that allow workloads to be mobile, agile, and be indifferent to the underlying physical network infrastructure. Backing up the NSX networking components and those services and components on which NSX relies to function properly is key to being able to recover in the event of a disaster scenario. Key in providing protection for NSX relies on obtaining backups of NSX components, vCenter Server, as well as distributed switch backups. Let’s take a look at how to properly backup the VMware NSX Manager portion of this by using the built-in administrative interface as well as schedule backups of the NSX Manager.
What does VMware NSX Backups Need to Include?
Primarily, the key component of an effective VMware NSX backup will be a backup of the NSX Manager. The NSX Manager is the first component that is installed in a VMware NSX deployment. It handles the management plane for VMware NSX and provides REST API access. Much like the new VMware vCenter Server VCSA 6.5 VAMI interface, NSX Manager has a built-in mechanism for exporting configuration via file transfer protocol. Additionally, what is nice with the NSX Manager is the ability to schedule the backups directly from the web management interface which is something surprisingly you can’t do with the current vCenter 6.5 VAMI interface.
The NSX Manager backups contains all of the NSX configuration, including controllers, logical switching and routing entities, security, firewall rules, and all other configuration that has been specified with either the NSX Manager UI or API. Is this absolutely everything that needs to be backed up for VMware NSX disaster recovery?
Also, extremely important when backing up VMware NSX is performing backups of vCenter Server along with the vCenter database. Also, distributed switches need to be backed up separately as well. So to recap, effective VMware NSX backups include:
- NSX Manager backups
- vCenter Server backups
- Distributed Switch backups
How to Backup VMware NSX Manager
To access the administrative interface for the VMware NSX Manager, simply browse out to the IP address of the NSX Manager appliance. Once there, click Backups & Restore to configure the NSX Manager backups. As shown below, we can configure the FTP Server Settings, Scheduling and Exclude settings for information we want to exclude from the backups.
Logging into the NSX Manager web interface allows configuring Backups of the VMware NSX Manager
Click the FTP Server Settings Change button to configure the settings for the FTP or SFTP server connection. SFTP is recommended for security as traffic is encrypted. In the Backup Location configuration, set the IP or FQDN of the server, the protocol you want to use as well as the connection information such as the user name and password. The backup directory is the location in the target where the backups will be stored. Additionally, we can setup a filename prefix and pass phrase for the backup files.
Configure the SFTP connection to target for NSX Manager backups
One of the really great things about the NSX backup configuration is we can configure scheduling out of the box without any scripting or other configuration. This can be setup weekly, daily, or hourly.
Creating an NSX Manager backup schedule
On the Exclude options, we can choose whether or not we want to exclude the Audit Logs, System Events, and Flow Records.
Choosing NSX Manager items to exclude in the NSX Manager backup configuration
The Backups & Restore settings are now populated with configuration
In the Backup History section of the management interface, we can click the Backup button to perform ad-hoc backups on the fly at any time of the NSX Manager. When the Create Backup dialog box pops up, click the Start button to begin the backup process.
Confirm the new NSX manager backup by clicking Start
After a few moments depending on the size of the NSX deployment, the backup operation should finish successful. If you look on your SFTP server, you should see the backup files created in the target directly configured in the NSX Manager backup configuration.
NSX Manager backup files are created on the SFTP server
Configure VMware NSX Backups Thoughts
VMware NSX is at the heart of VMware’s SDDC infrastructure solution and provides a powerful way to have the virtualized networking capability for today’s modern workloads and the agility they require. However, when thinking about a data protection solution for all aspects of today’s modern SDDC infrastructure, organizations running VMware NSX must backup VMware NSX components regularly to be able to recover in the event of a disaster. VMware NSX Manager provides an extremely intuitive interface that allows performing and scheduling backups right in the administrative interface of the NSX Manager appliance. With the options to backup to both FTP or SFTP as well as configure passwords on the backup files themselves, organizations can configure backup security encryption both in-flight and at rest. By having backups of NSX Manager as well as vCenter and any distributed switches in the environment, organizations will have a complete representation of the virtualized network infrastructure in the event any one part of the SDDC network needs to be reconstructed.
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