Tag Archives: 8.0.1

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How to backup vRealize Automation 8.x using Veeam

In this blog post I am going to dissect backing up vRealize Automation 8.x using Veeam Backup and Replication.

- Understanding the backup methods
- Performing an online backup
- Performing an offline backup

Understanding the Backup Methods

Reading the VMware documentation around this subject can be somewhat confusing at times. And if you pay attention, there are subtle changes between the documents as well. Lets break this down.

  • vRealize Automation 8.0
    • As part of the backup job, you need to run a script to stop the services
    • This is known as an offline backup
    • Depending on your backup software, you can either do this by running a script located on the vRealize Automation appliance or by triggering using the pre-freeze/post-freeze scripts when a snapshot is taken of the VM.
    • The snapshot must not include the virtual machines memory.
    • If you environment is a cluster, you only need to run the script on a single node.
    • All nodes in the cluster must be backed up at the same time.
  • vRealize Automation 8.0.1 and 8.1 (and higher)
    • It is supported to run an online backup
      • No script is needed to shut down the services
    • Snapshot taken as part of the backup must quiesce the virtual machine.
    • The snapshot must not include the virtual machines memory.
    • It is recommended to run the script to stop all services and perform an offline backup.
      • You may also find your backup runs faster, as the virtual machine will become less busy.

Performing an Online Backup

Let’s start with the easier of the two options. Again, this will be supported for vRealize Automation 8.0.1 and higher. Continue reading How to backup vRealize Automation 8.x using Veeam

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vRSLCM – vRA fails to update from 8.0 to 8.0.1 – LCMVRAVACONFIG90030

When updating my vRealize Automation instance from 8.0 to 8.0.1, I ran into an issue;

LCMVRAVACONFIG90030

Error Code: LCMVRAVACONFIG90030

vRA VA Upgrade Status Check failed.

Upgrade prepare on vRA VA sc-dc1-vra001.simon.local failed with state error. To know more about the failure, run command "vracli upgrade status --details" on the vRA VA sc-dc1-vra001.simon.local. If the prepare upgrade issue is fixed outside vRSLCM, the vRSLCM request can be proceeded to next step by clicking RETRY with proceedNext property set to true. Optionally, the whole upgrade can be cancelled and started afresh by clicking RETRY with cancelAndStartAfresh property set to true. If both the retry properties are set to true,cancelAndStartAfresh property will take precedence and will be honoured

vRSLCM vRA8 failed upgrade veducate.co .uk

I logged into my vRA node, and ran the recommended command “vracli upgrade status –details”. This basically told me no running application servers were running. Which was odd, as my vRA installation was working.

vRSLCM vRA upgrade failed vracli upgrade status details veducate.co .uk

So I ran “vracli status” and immediately seen that I had some issue with my database in the vRA node. I’m unsure if this was a pre-upgrade issue, or happening during the upgrade.

[ERROR] Exception while getting DB nodes.
...
Error getting database node status

I decided to run “deploy.sh” which re-runs all the Kubernetes configuration, thus killing and restarting all the services. This seemed to resolve my issue, as running the upgrade again worked as expected.

vRSLCM vRA upgrade failed vracli status deploy.sh veducate.co .uk

If you encounter this situation, I would recommend you contact VMware Support for guidance, and information as to why your services have stopped. As this is in my lab environment, I do not have the same considerations as those that run production.