Best way to quickly restore RMA gateway on different version ?

[carl_t]

Hi Guys

We have had multiple failures in the last few months and it always takes some time to get a gateway back online.

Normally when we have an RMA, the gateway always comes on a different version and we have to create a bootable usb using isomorphic tool.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Is it possible to snapshot to USB? and when we get a new device, when it comes to the first time config wizard, we can just select revert from snapshot and point it to the USB?

Many thanks

[G_W_Albrecht]

Yes, see sk98068: Gaia Limitations after Snapshot Recovery ! General information: Gaia R81.10 Administration Guide p.445: Snapshot Management and sk108902: Best Practices - Backup on Gaia OS

Limitation is disk size, as the snapshot partition is copied to /var/log and compressed before export, see also sk115144 !

[Chris_Atkinson]

You may also wish to explore the Blink process for expediting a build with the required hotfixes.

Also depending on the scale at which you're working the CDT RMA process might also be a convenient approach.

[the_rock]

I will tell you what I always used to recommend to customers in situation like this and it actually seemed to work really well...just make sure you have show configuration output in text file, so once you get new appliance, you can always copy the output, just make sure the IP addresses are correct before you do. At least, that allows you to get quick access to the box and not having to spend time with backup/snapshot.

[G_W_Albrecht]

This is afaik the best approach for simple gateways - but here we have RMA appliances containing different versions, so even the CDT RMA process might be faster than manual installation steps. 

[the_rock]

Thats true! Though, I did use it for different versions and it did work as well.

[G_W_Albrecht]

It will - but you will have to change version in dashboard and care for different version gateways after RMA - clearly not what we expect. As you can export a snapshot to any local drive, USB is a possible way to export the complete installation (FTP and SCP are possible, but need space in /var/log 2x snapshot).

[the_rock]

True, I definitely agree brother. Im just saying at least might be a good "fix" on a fly.

[carl_t]

So, could we copy the snapshot locally to the USB in the gateway? I see you cannot do this via the GUI, could we do it via cli? OR do we need to save to our pc, then copy to USB?

If we did have the snapshot, then if we got a new appliance say on r80.30 could we just go to the first time wizard then click import existing snapshot with our old r80.20?