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What is the value of Virtual Connect Domain backups?

 
chuckk281
Trusted Contributor

What is the value of Virtual Connect Domain backups?

Jase had a pretty provacative statement:

 

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Virtual Connect Backups: Where's the value? Because VC backups are not granular and are not easy to do on a regular schedule, I'm calling a VC backup\restore as risky and use-less.

 

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There were some good discussions around this. Here are some of the conversations:

 

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Brandon:

No they are very useful. I had a firmware update go bad just recently and needed those backups to get things working. If you use VC assigned wwn and Mac those backups are important. And the restore does work. It sure could be easier to automate and have it automatically backup on a change but I recommend doing one at least before any big change.

 

Chris:

While I do agree with you to a certain extent, the VC Domain Backup contains more information in it other than say the similar output of the OA "show all" or the current “show all” command in VCM. We are working on solutions to address this. And while this is a public forum, I would ask that you raise this concern to your HP Account Team.

 

Jase replied:

Yes, we do use VCEM assigned WWN and MAC addresses, on a very large scale. With hundreds of server profiles, boot from san servers moving between enclosures in a domain groups, and engineers making daily network changes to profiles it is nearly impossible to do a restore without reversing a recent change someone else did on another server profile. @Charles: True, people do move on and the intial tribal knowledge can be gone, but, good engineers leave a trail of very detailed engineering documents of every SUS and Fabric uplink and downlink configuration. But I don't think people moving on introduces a risk of losing the configuration. The uplink configurations are stored in the domain group configuration. If we lost every enclosure in a domain group except one enclosure we still have this config. No need to backup or refrence the engineering docs to rebuild SUS or Fabric setups. Honestly we are not really concerned about losing uplink configuration, we are worried about the engineer who accidentally deletes one or many server profiles that span accross many enclosures and domain groups. @Chris: I've officially put in related product enhancement requests. I'm not trying to gripe, I'm just trying to figure out how the solution scales for very large enterprise and how to operationalize it. Curious if others are having these same issues and asking HP to improve backup capabilities to make things easier for all of us in future release. Its the feedback circle for better or worse! :)

 

Jeroen:

You can very easily automate this already by making a script that runs for instance every month or even every day/week.

Just use VCSU (Virtual Connect SUpport Utility)to do this.
VCSU is available at ftp://iss:tools4AL@ftp.usa.hp.com

the command would be:
vcsu -a configbackup -i <IP> -u <USER> -p <PWD> [-vcu <VCM USER> -vcp <VCM
PASS>] [-l <FILE>] [-cp <CFG PASS>]

IP = IP Address of the active Onboard Administrator in enclosure

USER = Name of the Onboard Administrator user with privileges to
access all enclosure interconnect bays

PWD = Password of the Onboard Administrator user
Use * to prompt for password

VCM USER = Name of Virtual Connect user with Domain privileges
Required if Enclosure is in a Virtual Connect Domain
N/A if Enclosure is not in a Virtual Connect Domain

VCM PASS = Password for VCM USER

FILE = File name or full path of the file on the local file system to
which the Virtual Connect domain configuration will be saved.
Optional.

CFG PASS = Password for Config Backup of Virtual Connect Domain
Optional. Only used in Virtual Connect 3.00 and later

Example:
vcsu -a configbackup -i 192.168.1.100 -u Admin -p password

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All great discussions. Let us know your thoughts and suggestions.

3 REPLIES 3
JohnLewisNOV
Occasional Visitor

Re: What is the value of Virtual Connect Domain backups?

I am using the following:

 

vcsu -a configbackup -i <IP> -u <USER> -p <PWD> -vcu <VCM USER> -vcp <VCM PASS>

 

This works great to grab the VC config from one chassis, but I need to backup the config on almost 100 c7000 chassis, how would I edit the command to do this?

 

Secondly, I love the default file name, how do i redirect the output to another directory without changing the name? When I try the [-l <File>] it wants a file name and leaving it blank does not work.

Hongjun Ma
Trusted Contributor

Re: What is the value of Virtual Connect Domain backups?

 

For question 1.

VCSU only talks to a single enclosure during its execution. You would need to create a wrapper script to execute VCSU once for each enclosure IP you have.

 

For question 2:

VCSU will by default store the backup file in the current directory. If you want to use the default file name but in a different directory, then CD to the preferred directory and then execute VCSU. You will need to provide the full path to VCSU on the command line if it is not in your path. For example:


CD C:\Backups\Enclosure1

“C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\Virtual Connect Support Utility\VCSU.exe” -a configbackup -i <enclosure 1 ip>…

CD C:\Backups\Enclosure2

“C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\Virtual Connect Support Utility\VCSU.exe” -a configbackup -i <enclosure 2 ip>…


 

My VC blog: http://hongjunma.wordpress.com



joom
Senior Member

Re: What is the value of Virtual Connect Domain backups?

Hi All,

 

   I use the below script to backup config.  You need to create folder C:\VCSUConfigCollect\enc1 and C:\VCSUConfigCollect\enc2 first and then run the below script.  Don't forget to change IP Address of OA, User & Pwd.

 

set DAY=%DATE:~0,3%%DATE:~4,2%%DATE:~7,2%%DATE:~10,4%

if %DAY%==Sun set BIT=1
if %DAY%==Mon set BIT=2
if %DAY%==Tue set BIT=3
if %DAY%==Wed set BIT=4
if %DAY%==Thu set BIT=5
if %DAY%==Fri set BIT=6
if %DAY%==Sat set BIT=7

 

rem ENCLOSURE1

cd C:\VCSUConfigCollect\enc1
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Hewlett-Packard Company\Virtual Connect Support Utility\vcsu.exe" -a collect -i 192.168.1.1-u oaadmin -p oapassword -vcu vcadmin -vcp vcpassword
move oaShowAll.txt enc1_oaShowAll%DAY%.txt
move vcmShowAll.txt enc1_vcmShowAll%DAY%.txt
move vcsu*.log enc1_vcsu_log_%DAY%.log

rem ENCLOSURE2

cd C:\VCSUConfigCollect\enc2
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Hewlett-Packard Company\Virtual Connect Support Utility\vcsu.exe" -a collect -i 192.168.1.2 -u oaadmin -p oapassword -vcu vcadmin -vcp vcpassword

move oaShowAll.txt enc2_oaShowAll%DAY%.txt
move vcmShowAll.txt enc2_vcmShowAll%DAY%.txt
move vcsu*.log enc2_vcsu_log_%DAY%.log