Back up and restore a sensor or console
After you have configured your ExtraHop console and sensor with customizations such as bundles, triggers, and dashboards or administrative changes such as adding new users, ExtraHop recommends that you periodically back up your settings to make it easier to recover from a system failure.
Daily backups are automatically saved to the local datastore, however, we recommend
that you manually create a system backup prior to upgrading firmware or before making a major
change in your environment (changing the data feed to the sensor, for example). Then, download
the backup file and save it to a secure location.
Back up a sensor or console
Create a system backup and store the backup file to a secure location.
| Important: | System backups contain sensitive information, including SSL keys. When you create a system backup, make sure you store the backup file to a secure location. |
The following customizations and resources are saved when you create a
backup.
- User customizations such as bundles, triggers, and dashboards.
- Configurations made from Administration settings, such as locally-created users and remote imported user groups, running configuration file settings, SSL certificates, and connections to ExtraHop recordstores and packetstores.
The following customizations and resources are not saved when you
create a backup or migrate to a new target.
- License information for the system. If you are restoring settings to a new target, you must manually license the new target.
- Precision packet captures. You can download saved packet captures manually by following the steps in View and download packet captures.
- When restoring a virtual console that has a tunneled connection from a sensor, the tunnel must be reestablished after the restore is complete and any customizations on the console for that sensor must be manually recreated.
- User-uploaded SSL keys for traffic decryption.
- Secure keystore data, which contains passwords. If you are restoring a
backup file to the same target that created the backup, and the keystore is intact, you
do not need to re-enter credentials. However, if you are restoring a backup file to a
new target or migrating to a new target, you must re-enter the following credentials:
- Any SNMP community strings provided for SNMP polling of flow networks.
- Any bind password provided to connect with LDAP for remote authentication purposes.
- Any password provided to connect to an SMTP server where SMTP authentication is required.
- Any password provided to connect to an external datastore.
- Any password provided to access external resources through the configured global proxy.
- Any password provided to access ExtraHop Cloud Services through the configured ExtraHop cloud proxy.
- Any authentication credentials or keys provided to configure Open Data Stream targets.
Restore a sensor or console from a system backup
You can restore the ExtraHop system from the user-saved or automatic backups stored on the system. You can perform two types of restore operations: only customizations (changes to alerts, dashboards, triggers, custom metrics, for example) or both customizations and system resources.
Before you begin
The target must be running the same firmware version, matching the first and second digits of the firmware that generated the backup file. If the versions are not the same, the restore operation will fail.This procedure describes the steps required to restore a backup file to the same
sensor or console that created the backup file. If you want to migrate the settings to a
new sensor or console, see Transfer settings to a new sensor or console.
Restore a sensor or console from a backup file
This procedure describes the steps required to restore a system from a backup file
to the same sensor or console that created the backup file.
Transfer settings to a new sensor or console
This procedure describes the steps required to restore a backup file to a new console or sensor. Only system settings from your existing console or sensor are transferred. Metrics on the local datastore are not transferred.
Before you begin
- Create a system backup and save the backup file to a secure location.
- Power off the source sensor or console to remove
it from the network before transferring settings. The target and source cannot
be active on the network at the same time.
Important: Do not disconnect any sensors that are already connected to a console. -
Deploy and register the target
sensor or console.
- Ensure that the target is the same type of sensor or console (physical or virtual) as the source.
- Ensure that the target is the same size or larger (maximum throughput on the sensor; CPU, RAM, and disk capacity on the console) as the source.
- Ensure that the target has a firmware version that matches the firmware version that generated the backup file. If the first two digits of the firmware versions are not the same, the restore operation will fail.
- After transferring settings to a target console, you must manually reconnect all sensors.
- When transferring settings to a target console that is configured for a tunneled connection to the sensors, we recommend that you configure the target console with the same hostname and IP address as the source console.
Reconnect sensors to the console
If you transferred settings to a new console, you must manually reconnect all previously connected sensors.
Before you begin
| Important: | If your console and sensors are configured for a tunneled connection, we recommend that you configure the source and target consoles with the same IP address and hostname. If you cannot set the same IP address and hostname, skip this procedure and create a new tunneled connection to the new IP address or hostname of the console. |
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