Backing up and restoring the system configuration

You can back up and restore the configuration data for the system after preliminary tasks are completed.

Configuration data for the system provides information about your system and the objects that are defined in it. The backup and restore functions of the svcconfig command can back up and restore only your configuration data for the SAN Volume Controller system. You must regularly back up your application data by using the appropriate backup methods.

You can maintain your configuration data for the system by completing the following tasks:

Backing up the configuration data
Restoring the configuration data
Deleting unwanted backup configuration data files

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

No independent operations that change the configuration for the system can be running while the backup command is running.
No object name can begin with an underscore character (_).

Note:

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 configuration data file.
All other objects with default names are renamed during the restore process. The new names appear in the format name_r where name is the name of the object in your system.
Connections to iSCSI Mdisks for migration purposes are not restored.

Before you restore your configuration data, the following prerequisites must be met:

The Security Administrator role is associated with your user name and password.
You have a copy of your backup configuration files on a server that is accessible to the system.
You have a backup copy of your application data that is ready to load on your system after the restore configuration operation is complete.
You know the current license settings for your system.
You did not remove any hardware since the last backup of your system configuration. If you had to replace a faulty node, the new node must use the same worldwide node name (WWNN) as the faulty node that it replaced.
Note: You can add new hardware, but you must not remove any hardware because the removal can cause the restore process to fail.
No zoning changes were made on the Fibre Channel fabric that would prevent communication between the SAN Volume Controller and any storage controllers that are present in the configuration.
You have at least 3 USB flash drives if encryption was enabled on the system when its configuration was backed up. The USB flash drives are used for generation of new keys as part of the restore process or for manually restoring encryption if the system has less than 3 USB ports.

Use the following steps to determine how to achieve an ideal T4 recovery:

Open the appropriate svc.config.backup.xml (or svc.config.cron.xml) file with a suitable text editor or browser and navigate to the node section of the file.
For each node entry, make a note of the value of the following properties: IO_group_id and panel_name.
Use the CLI sainfo lsservicenodes command and the data to determine which nodes previously belonged in each I/O group.

Restoring the system configuration should be performed by one of the nodes previously in IO group zero. For example, property name="IO_group_id" value="0" . The remaining nodes should be added, as required, in the appropriate order based on the previous IO_group_id of its nodes.

The SAN Volume Controller analyzes the backup configuration data file and the system to verify that the required disk controller system nodes are available.

Before you begin, hardware recovery must be complete. The following hardware must be operational: hosts, SAN Volume Controller nodes, internal flash drives and expansion enclosures (if applicable), the Ethernet network, the SAN fabric, and any external storage systems (if applicable).