Nutanix Prism Central Backup ?

This is very interesting question: How to take Nutanix Prism Central Virtual Machine ( PC-VM ) backup and/or is it possible to take the Nutanix Prism Central backup using any third party backup solution tool / software ?
Most of the Nutants are asking / looking answer for this question.

Today, i accepted this challenge to answer the correct answer but my answer might be disappoint you. But i will share the solution to protect your Nutanix Prism Central VM as well.

I will answer of your following queries:

• Is it possible to take Nutanix Prism Central Backup ?
• Why it is not possible to take Nutanix Prism Central Backup ?
• How to protect Nutanix Prism Central VM, any solution ?
• Conclusion

Is it possible to take Nutanix Prism Central Backup ?

No, to take Nutanix Prism Central Backup neither usnig Nutanix Prism native tool Data Proection nor through any Nutanix supported top 5 Backup solution like Comtrade Hycu, Veritas, Veeam, Commvault and Rubrik etc.

Why it is not possible to take Nutanix Prism Central Backup ?

First of all you must know – what is Nutanix prism Central and what is does ?

Brief introduction: Nutanix Prism Central was natively developed to mange Nutanix multiple cluster through single manageable window to centralized the monitoring and perform task without any hassle to manage the Nutanix Acropolis cluster. The Nutanix Prism Central run as a virtual machine VM that is installed after the Nutanix Cluster is up and running.T

There is few technical reason / challenges to take Nutanix Prism Central VM backup is not possible:

1. Nutanix Prism Central VM runs thousands of services like analytics, automation, information gathering, forecasting service, dynamic monitoring, Capacity runway and Multi-cluster management etc. Nutanix cluster runs thousands of services 24×7 and does not stop because all services collects the cluster related data.

2. Nutanix Prism Central is Linux based Centos operating system that is pre-hardened as per Nutanix security guidelines.

3. You can’t install any third party patch or package to modify the Nutanix Prism Central configuration

4. In Linux Based Operating system is always required to install backup agent to take backup.

5. For example – anyhow you take Prism Central backup that backup might be corrupted during taking backup and/or during restoring it back.

So, there is majority of possibility of Nutanix Prism Central backup will be corrupted.

Oh God – is there is way to take Nutanix Prism Central backup / protection plan ?
Answer is yes. there is an Nutanix Prism Central built-in feature to protect the Nutanix Prism Central.

Read also: Change Nutanix Prism Element and Prism Central Password

How to protect Nutanix Prism Central VM, any solution ?

Yes there is a solution, So what happened if can’t take backup, you have another Nutanix native scale-out option to protect Nutanix Prism Central VM to create multiple instance ( Maximum 3 instances ) per Prism Central cluster. All three Prism Central VM would be in cluster. Read more Nutanix Prism Central version 5.10.x Scalability Limitation

It would be give you three times more Nutanix Prism Central VM redundancy in case of Nutanix Prism Central failure. if one or two Nutanix Prism Central VM faces any kind of services critical issue and/or even get failure. there would be no impact on Nutanix Prism Central operations.

Nutanix Prism Central Compute and Storage Spec are here:

Read more: How to Scale-out Nutanix Prism Central ?

Conclusion

In last i would say – If your Nutanix Acropolis cluster have enough Compute resources then i would recommend, Please Scale-out Nutanix Prism Central to create more Nutanix Prism Central instance to get high level redundancy to avoid Nutanix Prism Central failure.

Read also: Reset Prism Central Password From Command Line

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