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Creating Offline Snapshots of vRA Nodes

Writer's picture: Abhilash GBAbhilash GB

When managing the lifecycle of Aria Automation, there may be instances where you need to modify the configuration of the nodes, with the option to revert these changes if needed. Also, in cases such as upgrading/patching a vRA cluster, taking offline snapshots of the nodes is crucial.


Aria Suite Lifecycle (formerly vRLCM ) enables you to create offline snapshots of the Aria Automation (formerly vRA) nodes it manages in an automated manner. However, to appreciate the benefit of using the vRLCM method, it is important to understand what is needed if you were to do this manually.


So, let's begin by reviewing the procedure for generating offline snapshots of a vRA cluster without using vRLCM.


  1. You will need to SSH to one of VRA nodes in the cluster and run the deploy.sh script to stop the services on all nodes in the cluster

# /opt/scripts/deploy.sh --shutdown 
  1. Verify that the services have been stopped on all the nodes. To do so, ssh into each of the vRA nodes and run the following command.

# kubectl -n prelude get pods // You should not see any pods in the namespace.
  1. Logon to the vCenter managning the vRA and shutdown all the vRA nodes.

  2. Use vCenter to create a snapshot on each of vRA nodes.

  3. Use vCenter to power-on all the vRA nodes.

  4. SSH into one of the vRA nodes in the cluster and run the deploy.sh script to kick off starting the services on all nodes in the cluster.

# /opt/scripts/deploy.sh
  1. Verify that all the pods hosting the services are up and running in the prelude namespaces. To do so, SSH into each of vRA nodes and run the following command:

# kubectl -n prelude get pods 



Now, lets take a look at the procedure to create offline snaphots on vRA nodes using vRLCM:


  1. Logon to Aria Suite Lifecycle as admin@local and navigate to Lifecycle Operations | Environments

  2. Locate the environment corresponding to your Aria Automation instance and click VIEW DETAILS

  3. On the environment's page, use the horizontal elispes to drop-down a menu and go to Snapshot | Create Snapshot.

  4. On the Snapshot Details screen, supply a snapshot prefix/name and an optional description. By default, this will create an offline snapshot - meaning it will gracefully shutdown the appliance and create a snapshot and will also automatically power-on the appliance once the snapshot has been created. So leave the toggle "Shutdown before taking snapshot" enabled and click NEXT.

  5. On the next screen, run a precheck and if all validations are successful, click FINISH.

  6. You should see a request of type "Product Snapshot Request" complete successfuly in the Requests page.


The advantage of vRLCM's automated process is that it gracefully stops all services on all nodes, shuts them down, creates snapshots, powers the nodes back up, and then starts all the services on them, without any user intervention..




Also, the snapshots created by vRLCM can be managed without logging into the vCenter.


To do so,


  1. Navigate to Lifecycle Operations | Environments and VIEW DETAILS of the environment corresponding to the VRA Node.

  2. Use the horizontal elipses to drop-down the menu and navigate to Snapshot | Manage Snapshots

  3. On the Manage Snasphots screen, you will have options to REVERT or DELETE snapshots.


Note: It is recomended to perform lifecycle operations such as snapshots or changing the power-state of the vRA nodes using Aria Suite Lifecycle (vRLCM).

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