Backup and Restore

You should backup the Cisco NAC Guest Server on a regular basis so that in the event of a hardware failure you do not lose critical data. The Cisco NAC Guest Server backup process backs up the system setup, account database, and all audit records, enabling you to recover everything you need in the event of a failure. You can either create a "point-in-time" snapshot, or schedule system backups to be automatically saved to the Cisco NAC Guest Server or a remote FTP server.

This chapter includes the following sections:

•Configuring Backup

•Restoring Backups

Configuring Backup

This section describes the following

•Saving Backup Settings

•Taking Snapshots

•Scheduling Backups

Saving Backup Settings

Step 1 From the administration home page, select Server > Backup as shown in Figure 13-1.

Figure 13-1 Backup Settings

Step 2 To perform the backup to a remote FTP server, click the Backup Settings tab:

•Enter the Remote Server Address for the FTP server.

•Enter the TCP Port to be used (usually port 21).

•Enter the Directory to store the backup.

•Enter a Username and Password (confirming the password) that allows access to the FTP server.

•Selecting the Mode is Passive box activates passive for the FTP Mode. Leaving it unchecked keeps this inactive.

Step 3 Click the Save button to save the backup settings.

Note If you choose to only store backups locally on the Cisco NAC Guest Server, they are placed in the /guest/backups directory. Cisco recommends backing up this directory remotely using SFTP and logging in with the root username and password. This ensures that you have an external copy, if there is a hardware failure to the disk in the appliance.

Taking Snapshots

You can save a point-in-time snapshot to allow you to download a backup of the Cisco NAC Guest Server at an exact moment.

Step 1 From the administration home page, select Server > Backup and select the Backup Settings tab as shown in Figure 13-1.

Step 2 To save a snapshot backup, click the Snapshot button at the bottom of the form.

Step 3 You are prompted by your web browser to save the backup file to disk.

Scheduling Backups

You can schedule backups to occur every day, week, or month at 1:00 AM. Scheduled backups are stored in either the /guest/backup directory of the Cisco NAC Guest Server or on a remote FTP server.

Step 1 From the administration home page, select Server > Backup and select the Backup Schedule tab as shown in Figure 13-2.

Figure 13-2 Backup Schedule

Step 2 To perform local backups:

•Enter the Maximum number of backups that you want to save. The Cisco NAC Guest Server removes old backups that exceed this amount by discarding the oldest backup when new ones are created.

Note If you do not want to limit the number of files, you can specify a number less than 1, for example, 0 or -1.

•Specify how often you want the Cisco NAC Guest Server to perform backups in the Frequency dropdown menu. You can specify Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. If you select Weekly you must also specify which day of the week. If you select Monthly, you must specify which day of the month.

Note Cisco recommends specifying a date between the 1st and 28th day of the month to ensure that you automatically back up your system every month of the year.

Step 3 Click the Save button to save settings.

Restoring Backups

You can restore a backup to the Cisco NAC Guest Server from the administration interface.

Note You can only restore a backup to the same version of Cisco NAC Guest Server software with which the backup was performed. If you need to determine which version was used to perform the backup, open the backup archive file directory and view the version.html file in the backup archive.

Warning If you are running a resilient pair of Cisco NAC Guest Servers and want to restore a backup, you must turn off replication on both servers and only restore the backup to one of the servers. Then you must re-synchronize the other server. Failure to follow this procedure may result in data loss on one of the servers. Refer to Chapter 14 "Replication and High Availability" for details.

Step 1 From the administration home page, select Server > Backup and click the Restore a Backup File tab as shown in Figure 13-3.

Figure 13-3 Restore Backup

Step 2 Click the Browse button and select the backup archive you want to restore.

Step 3 Click the Restore button.

Step 4 The backup is uploaded to the Cisco NAC Guest Server and the data is restored. Once the data has been restored, the server will reboot so that the database is correctly loaded.