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It is important to take regular backups of the oVirt Engine if there is a failure. While PowerMax snapshots or clones are an available option, oVirt offers a simple engine-backup CLI tool, which dumps the engine to a single file that can be used for various restore operations. If backups are not taken regularly, the OVM event log warns the user with the following message:
There is no full backup available, please run engine-backup to prevent data loss in case of corruption.
The engine-backup utility is not installed by default, even on an oVirt node, but it is readily available in the repository. It does, however, require PostgreSQL.
To install the utility:
dnf install -y https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-8-x86_64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm
dnf -qy module disable postgresql
dnf install -y postgresql12-server
yum install ovirt-engine-tools-backup
When the utility is installed, take a full backup of the environment. Although there are many options for backing up using the utility, including adding configuration files, the simplest operation is to run a full backup, ensuring that everything is added. It is best to save the backup file to a location off the hosted engine server. In this environment, a separate PowerMax NFS mount, engine_backup, is used for this purpose.
Run the following command as root, modifying the file locations:
engine-backup --scope=all --mode=backup --file=/engine_backup/engine_backup_1-18-2024 --log=/engine_backup/engine_backup.log
The backup runs quickly. Figure 76 shows the results:
Figure 76. Full backup using utility engine backup
Dell Technologies recommends taking regular backups to ensure restore capabilities.