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ADC
14.1 - Current Release 13.1 13.0 12.1
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Backup and restore a Citrix ADC appliance

August 20, 2024
Contributed by: 
C C

When your appliance gets corrupted or needs an upgrade, you can back up your system configuration. This is done either through the Citrix CLI or GUI interface. The appliance also enables you to import the backup file from an external source. However, you can do this only through the GUI interface and there is no support through the CLI interface.

Points to remember

You must remember the following points when your backup and restore your appliance.

  • There must be a support for network configuration on a new platform.
  • The new platform build must be same as the backup file or a later version.

Back up a Citrix ADC appliance

Depending on data and backup requirement, you can create a “basic” backup or a “full” backup.

  • Basic backup. You can perform this type of backup if you want to back up files that constantly change. The files that you can back up are in the following table.

For information about the basic backup details, see the Table topic.

  • Full backup. In addition to the files that are backed up by a basic backup, a full backup has less frequently updated files. The files that are backed up when you use the “Full” backup option are:
Directory Sub-Directory or Files
nsconfig ssl, license, fips*
/var/ netscaler/ssl/, wi/java_home/jre/lib/security/cacerts/, wi/java_home/lib/security/cacerts/*

The backed-up data is stored as a compressed TAR file in the /var/ns_sys_backup/ directory. To avoid issues due to non-availability of disk space, you can store up to 50 backup files in this directory. You can use the rm system backup command to delete existing backup files and create more backups.

Note:

When the backup operation is in progress, do not execute commands that affect the configuration.

If a file that is required to be backed up is not available, the operation skips that file.

To back up a Citrix ADC appliance

Follow the procedure given below to back up a Citrix ADC appliance by using the Citrix ADC command line interface.

At the command prompt, do the following:

  1. Save the Citrix ADC configurations.

save ns config

  1. Create the backup file.

create system backup [<fileName>] -level <basic ¦ full> -comment <string>

Note:

If the file name is not specified, the appliance creates a TAR file with the following naming convention:backup_<level>_<nsip_address>_<date-timestamp>.tgz.

Example: To back up the full appliance using the default naming convention for the backup file.

> create system backup -level full

  1. Verify that the backup file was created.

show system backup

You can view properties of a specific backup file by using the fileName parameter.

Restore a Citrix ADC appliance

Important:

You cannot successfully restore your appliance, if you rename or modify your backup file.

When you restore your appliance, the restore operation untars the backup file from the /var/ns_sys_backup/ directory. Once the files are untarred, the files are copied to the respective directories.

To restore the Citrix ADC from a local backup file by using the command line interface

Note: Citrix recommends you to back up the current configuration before restoring a previous configuration. However, if you do not want the restore command to automatically create a backup of the current configuration, use the –skipBackup parameter.

At the command prompt, do the following:

  1. Obtain a list of the backup files available on the appliance.

    show system backup

  2. Restore the appliance by specifying one of the backup files.

    restore system backup <filename> [-skipBackup]

    Example: To restore by using a full backup of an appliance

    > restore system backup backup_full_<nsip_address>_<date-timestamp>.tgz

  3. Reboot the appliance.

    reboot

To backup and restore a Citrix ADC appliance by using the GUI

  1. Navigate to System > Backup and Restore.
  2. Click Backup/Import to start the process.
  3. In the Backup/Import page, select Create and set the following parameters.
    1. File Name. Name of the appliance backup file.
    2. Level. Select a backup level as basic or full.
    3. Comment. Provide a brief description for the backup.

  4. Click Backup.

  5. If you want to import a backup, you must select Import.

  6. Once backup is complete, you can select the file and click Download.

  7. To restore, select the backup file and click Restore.

  8. In the Restore page, verify backup file details and click Restore.

  9. After you restore, you must reboot the appliance.

For more information on how to backup and restore Citrix ADC instances, see Backup and Restore using Citrix ADM topic.

For more information on how to backup and restore an SDX appliance, see Backup and restore SDX appliance

For information about operations performed on system backup, see System Backup topic.

Backup and restore a Citrix ADC appliance
August 20, 2024
Contributed by: 
C C
August 20, 2024
Contributed by: 
C C

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