Backing up a cluster configuration: Panel help

Use the Backing Up a Cluster Configuration panel in the SAN Volume Controller Console to create a backup of your cluster configuration settings.

Introduction

Before you back up your cluster configuration data, the following prerequisites must be met:

No independent operations that change the cluster configuration can be running while the backup command is running.
No object name can begin with an underscore.

Notes:

The default object names for controllers, I/O groups, and managed disks (MDisks) do not restore correctly if the ID of the object is different from what is recorded in the current cluster configuration data file.
All other objects with default names are renamed during the restore process. The new names are displayed in the format name_r, where name is the name of the object in your cluster.

The backup function is designed to back up information about your cluster configuration, such as virtual disks (VDisks), local Metro Mirror or Global Mirror information, MDisk groups, and nodes. All other data that you have written to the VDisks is not backed up. Any application that uses the VDisks on the cluster as storage, must back up its application data using appropriate backup methods.

You must regularly back up your cluster configuration data and your application data to avoid data loss. If a cluster is lost after a severe failure occurs, both cluster configuration and application data is lost. You must reinstate the cluster to the exact state that it was prior to the failure and recover the application data.

The backup function creates three files that provide information about the backup process and cluster configuration. When you use the SAN Volume Controller Console to complete the backup, these files are created in the \console\ClusterConfiguration.bak\cluster of the IBM® System Storage® Productivity Center or master console, where cluster is the name of the cluster from which you want to back up the cluster configuration data.

The following table describes the three files that are created by the backup process:

Table 1. Files created during backup process. Describes the three files that are created by the backup process
File name	Description
svc.config.backup.xml	Contains your cluster configuration data.
svc.config.backup.log	Contains details about the backup, including any error information that might have been reported.

If the svc.config.backup.xml file already exists in the directory, it is renamed to svc.config.backup.bak. After the file is renamed, the new svc.config.backup.xml is written.

Actions

The following action is available:

Backup: Click this button to backup your cluster configuration.
Cancel: Click this button to exit this panel without backing up your cluster configuration.