Virtual Connect (VC) config backup question (backing up the fleet)

[chuckk281]

Kelly had a Virtual Connect backup problem:

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Team,

My apologies if this has been hashed out before on this distribution list.

I am working with a customer who has about 70+ C-Class enclosures with Virtual Connect.  In a recent review of their VCEM implementation (which they are working on – not complete yet), we discussed the need to routinely backup the individual VC of each enclosure, we need it today and also long term – even after VCEM is implemented.

I know of two methods to do the backup, 1) via the HP VC Manager web interface, or 2) via  the utility - vcsu  (  vcsu -a configbackup -i <OA IP> -u <OA user> -p <OA password> )

My question: With 70+ enclosures, it is not practical  to use the VC Manager web interface, so I am planning on creating a bat file on the CMS to perform the 70+ backups via vcsu.  I may also look to make the bat file a “custom tool” within SIM and use SIM to run it as a task (along with IP substitutions – I have not figure out how to protect the password).  Doing the custom tool, it will fold it all under the SIM umbrella.  We could choose a “collection” of VCs and run the tool against multiple at once and I could also use SIM to schedule the task.

I have three questions:

1.       Is it a good practice to perform backups with VCSU across a fleet of enclosures via a bat file ran from the CMS?  Am I adding a layer of overhead (ran from SIM) that will give me problems in a large environment?

2.       Do I run any risk for the environment to have a “scheduled” backup routine that will walk through all the enclosures on a regular basis – perhaps once  per month?

3.       Does anyone have any other methods or suggestions of how I should do this? 

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Vincent joined in:

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It sounds reasonable while VCEM is *not* implemented. Once it is, what you want to backup is the VCEM (SIM) database. When the domains are locked by VCEM, you won’t be able to back them up anyway without putting them into maintenance in VCEM, which would be impractical (there is no CLI way to do that today).

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Any other comments? How are you backing up your Virtual Connect profiles?