Backup and Restore

Effective backup and restore procedures are crucial for ensuring data integrity and system reliability.

Below are the key backup and restore strategies to implement in the ESA environment:

Full OS

  • Description: Backup of the complete operating system including all configurations, applications, and user data in ESA. This is applicable only for on-prem environment.

  • Frequency: Recommended weekly or before and after significant changes such as upgrade.

  • Restore Steps: Boot into a System Restore Mode to restore to last backed up state.

For more information to perform full OS backup and restore, refer Working with OS Full Backup and Restore.

Cloud

  • Description: Create snapshots of ESA instances for disaster recovery. This is applicable only for cloud environment.

  • Frequency: Recommended weekly or before and after significant changes such as upgrade or changes to policy in ESA.

  • Restore Steps: Restore the snapshot by following the cloud provider-specific restore procedure.

File

  • Description: Ensure that ESA data is regularly backed up and stored securely. Automating the process using scheduled task in ESA will help maintain consistency and reduce manual intervention. The restore steps allow easy recovery of data, ensuring minimal disruption in case of failure.

  • Frequency: Recommended weekly or before and after significant changes such as upgrade or changes to policy in ESA or in case of changes made to any of the keys under Key Management menu in ESA Web UI.

  • Tools: Configure Scheduled task in ESA to use tools like rsync, scp to copy exported backup files from ESA to an external machine. Ensure backup files are created along with timestamp. Refer point 3 in Scheduler Tasks for achieving this.

  • Restore Steps: Upload the required backed up matching the required timestamp to the ESA and initiate import. For more information about steps to import the backed up file, refer Importing Data/Configurations from a File.

Important: Scheduled tasks are not backed up as part of file backup.

Custom Files

The following custom files should be backed up and included as part of customer.custom to ensure they are replicated to all ESAs in the cluster during replication jobs:

  • Any custom files for td-agent.

  • Any custom files related to External HSM configurations, shared library files.

  • Any changes to rsyslog.

For more information about adding the required custom files as mentioned above, refer Working with the custom files.


Last modified : July 30, 2025