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Hello community,

I've seen many customers using Veeam Backup Replication to back up vCenter Server Appliance VMs via image level backup.

According to this KB https://www.veeam.com/kb2328  "vCenter Server Appliance - Backup/Restore Recommendations" Veeam do not reccomends you to run image level backups againts VCSA.

 

You should use:

 

 

So, I created this procedure to show how simple it is to back up a vCenter Server Appliance using VMware's own backup tool, which we call "vCenter Native File-Based Backup and Restore."
Check out this link for details:https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsphere/vsphere/7-0/vcenter-server-installation-and-setup-7-0/file-based-backup-and-restore-of-a-vcenter-server-environment.html

 

First of all, you must create a destination for the backup file, the destination could be accessed by several protocols, the protocols supported for backup are FTPS, HTTPS, SFTP, FTP, NFS, SMB and HTTP.

I just created a folder called C:\Backup_VCSA on my VBR itself, and just share it !

 

Secondly, using the VAMI interface, I configured the backup using file-based backup.

Access the port number 5480  of your VCSA  https://VCSA_IP:5480 , after login in, you can select the backup option and than, configure.

Now, you just need to configure the backup on the next screen.

 

Backup Location: 

Enter the backup location, including the protocol to use to connect to your backup server, the port, the server address, and backup folder to store the backup files.

Use one of the following protocols: FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SFTP, NFS, or SMB.

For FTP, FTPS, HTTP, or HTTPS the path is relative to the home directory configured for the service.

Backup Server Credentials: 

Enter a user name and password of a user with write  privileges on the backup server.

Schedule:  

Set the schedule recurrence and time for the backup.

The recurrence can be set daily, weekly, or you can customize the schedule to run the backup on a specific day or days of the week. You can specify the time of day to run the backup. The default time is 11:59pm.

Encrypt backup:

Enter an Encryption Password if you want to encrypt your backup file.

If you select to encrypt the backup data, you must use the encryption password for the restore procedure.

Numbers of backup to retain:

Select Retain all backups  or enter the number of backups to retain.

The retention information provides the number of backups to retain for a given vCenter Server

.

Data:

Supervisors Control Plane (available on v8)  The VMware Supervisor's control plane is a native Kubernetes control plane built directly on the vSphere hypervisor layer, which manages the creation and lifecycle of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters and workloads. It is enabled on a vSphere cluster and utilizes vSphere resources for its own operation and for the provisioning of Tanzu Kubernetes clusters, which run as virtual machines on the ESXi hosts. This integration allows vSphere administrators to manage Kubernetes resources through the vSphere Client and provides developers with Kubernetes environments that are integrated with the underlying vSphere infrastructure

Stats, Events, and Tasks

Inventory and configuration

 

As soon as the backup completes, you can see the backup media on the share.

 

 

 

Now, your VCSA is safe, in order to restore it, you just need to follow the procedure available on this link:
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsphere/vsphere/8-0/vcenter-server-installation-and-setup-8-0/file-based-backup-and-restore-of-a-vcenter-server-environment/file-based-vcenter-server-appliance-restore.html

 

Hope that help!

 

 

 

Don’t forget to go the extra mile and back up that share or target server using Veeam!

​@Tommy O'Shea Yes, thank you for remind that! :-) 

Yes best practice is file level then back up the files.  I do this in my homelab.

Hi, thank you. I also proceed with the native backup of the VCSA. But I also do image backups. I have also performed a restore from the Veeam backup image, and it worked 😋

Great article, thank you!

Please keep in mind the security considerations when it comes to opening any kind of connection to Veeam repository servers or VBR servers. When you simply open a file share on a VBR server (I know, this is only a lab scenario in your example above) anyone with a specific credential object (or even without, depending on the config) can access the folder and insert files.

 

My recommendation (from a security perspective) would be to create a folder e.g. on a fileserver that will be backed up by Veeam and select this as VCSA backup target. A firewall should be in between.

Hi ​@lukas.k Yes, that is true, you are absolutely right. I did it in my home lab :-) . thank you for your comments. 

Excellent Pulia! 

It's a question that customers often ask.

 

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