has anyone taken snapshots of their KACE SDA in VM/VSphere, is it possible/recommended?
We want to have a back out plan for our Kace SDA incase something goes wrong during appliance updates/upgrades. We are running our Kace SDA VM on a VSphere client and we were wondering if the Kace appliance supports snapshots.
Answers (2)
it is possible, but it is not supported/recommended.
If you want to do a secure snapshot, you should shutdown the appliance and then snapshot.
How about using the internal backup functionality with exporting all packages regulary to an external share?
See here: https://support.quest.com/kb/4268543
From my experience: snapshots would usually work but you can destroy cause a FS corruption with that (with Hyper-V it is very often the case, with vSphere it is rare but can happen too) and then you need to contact support for fixing that (a restore from the backup is faster if you have it handy on a new appliance)
Down the server and take the snapshot, don’t bother with backing up packages from the SDA, it’s the same thing as doing a manual file by file copy backup and no one has time for that!!
SDA data is pretty much static so it’s low risk.
Comments:
-
really bad advise, since this leaves all customers without a backup in case something goes wrong (corruption of the snapshot location, broken SDA database, loss of the snapshot, compromised appliance etc)
As a Quest Consultant you should KNOW THAT! - Nico_K 5 months ago-
Nico, not sure your comment is warranted, the customer does not state why they want the backup, if it is to secure a copy so they can carry out an upgrade, then a snapshot is by far and away the quickest and most convenient way to do this. Let’s be honest, if Quest cared about this majorly, you would put in a complete backup option for the SDA as there is for the SMA?
But in 15 years you haven’t yet seen the need?
If the customer has multiple builds, to take package backups would take time and as the data is usually pretty static on the SDA, doing this every few months would be a valuable exercise, but snapshots are a method relied on by millions of techs and usually work reliably.
As a KACE consultant with over a decade of successful delivery to Quest’s customers, that is what my “hands on” experience has taught me, and I’ve not ‘lost’ a customer SDA yet.
The customer has a choice ;o) - Hobbsy 5 months ago-
well, since the customers, who loose their appliances go to support.
And you opened already 4! tickets this year with THIS VERY PROBLEM! - Nico_K 4 months ago
