Installation guide

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Device Manager Guide, Cisco ACE 4700 Series Application Control Engine Appliance
OL-26645-02
Chapter 4 Configuring Virtual Contexts
Performing Device Backup and Restore Functions
Note The backup feature does not back up the sample SSL certificate and key pair files.
Typical uses for this feature are as follows:
• Back up a configuration for later use
• Recover a configuration that was lost because of a software failure or user error
• Restore configuration files to a new ACE when a hardware failure resulted in a Return Merchandise
Authorization (RMA) of the old ACE
• Transfer the configuration files to a different ACE
The backup and restore functions are supported in both the Admin and virtual contexts. If you perform
these functions in the Admin context, you can back up or restore the configuration files for either the
Admin context only or for all contexts in the ACE. If you perform these functions in a virtual context,
you can back up or restore the configuration files only for that context. Both the backup and the restore
functions run asynchronously (in the background).
Archive Naming Conventions
Context archive files have the following naming convention format:
Hostname_ctxname_timestamp.tgz
The filename fields are as follows:
– Hostname—Name of the ACE. If the hostname contains special characters, the ACE uses the
default hostname “switch” in the filename. For example, if the hostname is Active@~!#$%^,
then the ACE assigns the following filename: switch_Admin_2009_08_30_15_45_17.tgz
– ctxname—Name of the context. If the context name contains special characters, the ACE uses
the default context name “context” in the filename. For example, if the context name is
Test!123*, then the ACE assigns the following filename:
switch_context_2009_08_30_15_45_17.tgz
– timestamp—Date and time that the ACE created the file. The time stamp has the following
24 hour format: YYYY_MM_DD_hh_mm_ss
An example is as follows:
ACE-1_ctx1_2009_05_06_15_24_57.tgz
If you back up the entire ACE, the archive filename does not include the ctxname field. So, the format
is as follows:
Hostname_timestamp.tgz
An example is as follows:
ACE-1_2009_05_06_15_24_57.tgz
Archive Directory Structure and Filenames
The ACE uses a flat directory structure for the backup archive. The ACE provides file extensions for the
individual files that it backs up so that you can identify the types of files easily when restoring an
archive. All files are stored in a single directory that is tarred and GZIPed as follows:
ACE-1_Ctx1_2009_05_06_07_24_57.tgz
ACE-1_Ctx1_2009_05_06_07_24_57\
context_name-running
context_name-startup
context_name-chkpt_name.chkpt