Importing and exporting configurations

When you configure a new appliance, you can export and store the configuration settings for that appliance. Later, if changes occur that require you to remove or reinstall the appliance, then you can import the stored configuration data without losing any configuration settings.

Before you begin

To import or export configurations, you must first configure your appliance environment with data grids, users or groups, and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) information. For more information, see Configuring your appliance.

About this task

As an administrator, you set up appliances, which requires you to create data grid users and groups and LDAP configuration settings. After you complete this setup, you can preserve this information by exporting these configurations to a file. Then, you can use that exported file later to import the exported configuration information back into the appliance. You can import and export the following configuration information:

You might need to import and export configuration data if errors occur that require you to remove an appliance from a collective or reinstall an appliance in a stand-alone environment. For example, when you export configuration information from an appliance that you add to a collective, you can use the import function to recover the configuration that appliance had before joining the collective. In either stand-alone or collective environments, using the import and export actions saves you the time of manually re-creating configuration information for the removed appliance.

For stand-alone environments: If you are using a stand-alone appliance, complete steps 1 and 4, which include the following config command syntax for importing and exporting configurations:
config <import|export> -file <filename> [-silent]

The config export command accepts parameters with a value of 0 as well. In that, the command runs an archived export, which you cannot specify using the -file flag.

For command usage information, type config usage.

Procedure

  1. Export your configuration information to a file that you can use later. For example, export to the file, foo.json. Use the command-line interface, and run the config command, followed by a list of possible parameters; for example:
    config <export> -file foo.json -silent
    In the previous example, the -silent parameter is optional. Specifying -silent flag removes configuration status messages from displaying to screen, since these messages are displayed by default.
  2. Optional: Add the new appliance to a collective.
  3. Remove the appliance from the collective when an error occurs that corrupts your configuration data. You can use the log analysis tools to analyze how your runtime environment is performing and solve problems that occur in your appliance environment.
  4. Import the foo.json file that you created in the first step. Use the command-line interface, and run the config command, followed by a list of possible parameters; for example:
    config <import> -file foo.json -silent
    In the previous example, the -silent parameter is optional. Specifying -silent flag removes configuration status messages from displaying to screen, since these messages are displayed by default.
  5. Create a new collective with that appliance as the principle.
  6. Add other appliances back into the new collective, one at a time.