5.6

Backing Up the FSDB
All metric values that vCenter Operations Manager collects are stored in its file system database (FSDB). This
implementation enables the vCenter Operations Manager analytics software high access rates to the large
amounts of data that vCenter Operations Manager stores.
The FSDB is located on the vCenter Operations Manager server in either internal hard drives or a high-speed
storage area network (SAN) device. vCenter Operations Manager does not support NAS or NFS file systems.
The default location for the FSDB is vcenter-ops \data, which is suitable for smaller environments. In larger
environments, place the FSDB in a different file system than the vCenter Operations Manager software. You
can store the FSDB in one path location, or split it into multiple locations.
Each resource has its own folder within the FSDB. The resource ID is the folder name. Each resource folder
contains one data file for each month's data. Each file contains all metric values for all metrics for that resource
for that month. While vCenter Operations Manager is collecting data, the current month's files in the FSDB are
continually being updated.
FSDB Backup Guidelines
Back up all files in the vCenter Operations Manager FSDB folder regularly. You define these folders during
installation, and you can find them by looking at the FSDB_HOME folder specification in the Configure VMware
vCenter Operations Enterprise utility.
You can copy the FSDB at any time without stopping any vCenter Operations Manager services. The timing
of the backup does not depend on other file backups. Performing incremental backups can reduce backup time
and storage requirements, because only the most recent month's files are updated at any given time.
Over time, the FSDB can grow to be over 100GB. An efficient way to make incremental backups is to take
advantage of the FSDB Replication Sync capability, which is provided to enable disaster recovery failover. The
FSDB Replication Sync capability requires a separate vCenter Operations Manager server and FSDB data store,
which runs in a warm or passive mode.
Set Up FSDB Replication
You can use the FSDB Replication Sync capability to make incremental backups of the FSDB. The FSDB
Replication Sync capability requires a separate vCenter Operations Manager server and FSDB data store, which
runs in a warm or passive mode.
NOTE The vCenter Operations Manager vApp does not support replication, remote collectors, or distributed
analytics.
Prerequisites
n
Become familiar with how to start and stop the Analytics service. See “Start or StopvCenter Operations
Manager Services,” on page 102.
n
Contact VMware technical support before you change any replication settings.
Procedure
1 Create two vCenter Operations Manager servers, one primary and one backup.
2 Install the same version and build number of vCenter Operations Manager on both servers.
3 Open the replication.properties file in the vcenter-ops \user\conf\analytics directory on the
vCenter Operations Manager server.
4 Set enabled=true to enable replication of FSDB content.
5 Save your changes and close the replication.properties file.
VMware vCenter Operations Manager Administration Guide
122 VMware, Inc.