After deployment, you must consider the available options when choosing an enterprise backup and recovery solution.
After deployment, you must consider the available options when choosing an enterprise backup and recovery solution.
The following list details the backup objectives for Azure Stack Hub:
Different components of the Azure Stack Hub environment have different requirements for backup and recovery. Components to consider include:
Back up the HLH, hosted VM (DellEMC-MGMTVM), and network switches. Because the HLH is reimaged if there is a catastrophic or component failure, you must manually export the hosted VMs so that they can be copied to a Dell Data Domain or Server Message Block (SMB) file share. This task can be scripted and scheduled with PowerShell. After backup, you must share these files on the same backup share where the infrastructure backup controller stores control-plane backup data. We recommend that you organize your backups with a descriptive naming convention such as: Rack1/Region1, Rack2/Region1, Rack1/Region2, and so on.
Azure Stack Hub has an integrated Infrastructure Backup Service that is fully automated and backs up the Azure Stack Hub configuration. It must be validated regularly.
Infrastructure backups only cover the Azure Stack Hub configuration and its meta data. You can also use infrastructure backups that this service creates for the redeployment of the Azure Stack Hub cloud to restore identity, security, and Azure Resource Manager data. The Infrastructure Backup Service does not include user data and apps.
For more information, see Recover data in Azure Stack Hub with the Infrastructure Backup Service.
Dell Data Protection for tenant VMs is used to back up IaaS and PaaS VMs and workloads, as shown in the following figure. Data Protection can also be used to store Microsoft infrastructure backups on the same Data Domain or SMB file share.
The following sections provide more details for each component.
To protect the VMs running on the HLH, we recommend that you take a regular backup of the VMs using the Export-VM command function of Windows Server Hyper-V.
Protect your Azure Stack Hub Infrastructure by protecting the VMs that are running on the HLH. You can do the backup in several ways, but we recommend that you use the tools that Microsoft provides.
To back up the VMs:
Get-VM | Export-VM -Path "\\<SMB_TARGET>\<SMB_PATH>"
The copied files on the SMB file share are now ready to be backed up.
Enable the Infrastructure Backup Service from the Administration Portal so that Azure Stack Hub can generate infrastructure backups. If there is a catastrophic failure, the hardware partner can use cloud recovery to restore your environment from these backups. The cloud recovery ensures that operators and users can log in to the portal after recovery is complete. Users have their subscriptions restored, including:
To enable the Infrastructure Backup Service from the Administration portal and configure and run and infrastructure backup:
If you do not have a signed certificate, you must create a self-signed certificate for your infrastructure backups. This certificate uses both public and private keys, but only the public key is exported in the certificate.
$cert = New-SelfSignedCertficate
It takes a few minutes to configure the infrastructure backup. A confirmation window appears when the task is complete.
Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS) is another backup option for Dell Integrated System. You can use MABS to manage the backup and recovery of on-premises physical servers, VMs, apps, and production data.
MABS is based on Data Protection Manager (DPM), which is used with System Center. One advantage of using MABS is that it does not require additional licenses, while DPM does. You can run MABS from both an on-premises physical server or from an Azure Stack Hub VM.
MABS supports the following backup scenarios:
For more information about MABS, see What is the Azure Backup service?.
You can download MABS from Microsoft Azure Backup Server v3.
The supported best practices for hosting MABS include: