Currently (Oct. 2020), vManage doesn't have a daily backup function through GUI. If something went wrong with vMange, for example, the virtual machine of the vManage crashed, all the configuration data, including templates, device configurations, control policies, and data policies would be lost, and the SD-WAN network cannot be managed and new configuration changes can not be done.

This Dailybackup script automatically executes Python scripts through Linux Crontab daily tasks, backs up the configuration database file of vManage, and copies the backup file to the server through SCP every day.

The daily backup script provides an easy-to-use, low-cost, and easy-to-deploy automated data backup solution, which can effectively supplement the data backup function of vManage, helps customers to perform daily automatic backups, and eliminate the risk of data loss. You can easily recover the configuration database to a newly installed vManage.

1. job.sh A shell script, which starts the Python virtual environment, and executes the Python script.
2. dailaybackup.py The Python script implements SSH login to vManage by calling the netmiko module, sends a data backup command, and runs scp to copy the file to the ./backupdata directory of the backup server.
3. vmanage and vmanage.pub are a pair of RSA key pairs. Add vmanage.pub to vManage server's /home/admin/.ssh/authorized_keys. SSH login uses the private key vmanage for authentication in a passless way. You can generate your own key pair through ssh-keygen -t rsa -f .ssh/vmanage -C admin
4. backupjob.log is the log file of the backup job, which records the start and end time of the job, as well as the job running status.
5. ./backupdata is the directory for storing backup data.

(1) Git clone the code to your home directory, such as /home/ubuntu/

cd /home/ubuntu/
git clone https://github.com/weiborao/vmanage-dailybackup.git vmanage
cd vmanage

The file vmanage is the private key, permissions 0664 for 'vmanage' are too open, you can change it to 0600.

chmode 600 vmanage

(2) Install Python3.7 or above, and add the venv virtual environment in the /home/ubuntu/vmanage/ directory, or other directories.

which python3
python3 -V
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install netmiko

Before executing the script, execute the SSH login command on the Linux server at least once, and add the vmanage.pub to /home/admin/.ssh/authorized_keys

In the following example, the vManage server's IP address is 10.75.58.50.

scp vmanage.pub [email protected]:/home/admin/.ssh/authorized_keys

The authenticity of host '10.75.58.50 (10.75.58.50)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:rDdvfeJ0mJquMu0KiAtAkH++n3ZBS9sYEr+TRMQBNOI.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '10.75.58.50' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
viptela 20.1.1

[email protected]'s password:
vmanage.pub                                  100%  559   818.7KB/s   00:00

Note: If you have other hosts that are already in /home/admin/.ssh/authorized_keys, you can append vmanage.pub to the authorized_keys through vi editor.

After execution, the fingerprint information of vManage's SSH Key is stored in ~/.ssh/known_hosts to avoid asking whether to continue the connection during script execution.

ssh -i vmanage [email protected]
viptela 20.1.1

Last login: Sat Oct 10 10:37:17 2020 from 10.75.58.5
Welcome to Viptela CLI
admin connected from 10.75.58.5 using ssh on vmanage
vmanage#

Pay attention to check whether job.sh has executable permissions.

~/vmanage$ ll job.sh
-rwxrwxr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu 145 Oct 10 10:19 job.sh*

(3) Add a scheduled task for Linux, and edit it through crontab -e to schedule a backup task at 23:00 every day.

00 23 * * * cd /home/ubuntu/vmanage && ./job.sh

(4) The script is to executed once a day, vManage backs up the data of the day and replaces the backup file 7 days ago with a 0-byte file.

(5) Copy cleanzerofile.sh to the /home/admin/ directory of vManage server, log in to vManage regularly for execution, and it will delete 0-byte files.

Please find the demo videos here, each of them is the same.

vManage Daily Backup

YouTube: Cisco SDWAN vManage Configuration Database Daily backup script

Bilibili: Cisco vManage Dailybackup

(1) Simply configure vManage to make its Web Portal accessible, apply and install the certificate for it, because a newly installed vManage has a different UUID.

(2) Restore the minimized configuration, for example:

system
 system-ip 1.1.1.1
 site-id 1
 sp-org "China Unicom"
 org "China Unicom"
 vbond x.x.x.x

(3) Set vManage to multi-tenant mode (if the original vManage is multi-tenant mode)

(4)Execute request nms configuration-db restore /home/admin/dbbackup07xx.tar.gz and wait about 15 minutes to restore.

(5) After the vManage Web interface is restored, log in to check whether the tenant, device whitelist, template, and policy have been restored.

(6) Modify the vBond connection information, because after restoration, the vBond connection on vManage is connected through the 169.254.x.x address. You need to modify to vBond public network address. After reconnecting to vBond, the restoration of vManage is completed.

My teamates Michael Tao Li, and Xing James Jiang helped to build this daily backup script.