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Version 6.30
Version 6.30
  • Welcome
  • Nexthink V6
  • Overview
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  • Installation and configuration
    • Planning your installation
      • Overview of the installation process
      • Hardware requirements
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      • Reference architectures
    • Installing Portal and Engine Appliances
      • Installing the Appliance
      • Installing the Appliance on Azure
      • Installing the Appliance on AWS
      • Installing the Appliance on OTC
      • Managing Appliance accounts
      • Setting the names of the Portal
      • Setting the names of the Engines
      • Specifying your internal networks and domains
      • Federating your Appliances
      • STIG compliance in Web Console
      • Connecting the Portal to the Engines
      • Configuring session performance storage
      • Configuring device performance storage
      • Setting up a software license
      • Sending email notifications from the Appliance
      • Allocating resources for the Portal
    • Installing the Collector
      • Installing the Collector on Windows
      • Installing the Collector on macOS
      • Installing the Collector for a Proof of Value
      • Assigning Collectors to Engines
      • Assignment of roaming Collectors
      • Collector MSI parameters reference table
      • Nxtcfg - Collector configuration tool
      • Inspecting the connection status of the Collector
      • Querying the status of the TCP connection of the Collector
      • Reporting the URL of HTTP web requests
      • Auditing logon events
      • Viewing user interactions in virtualized and embedded environments
      • Engage notifications on macOS
      • Configuring Collector level anonymization
    • Collector remote connectivity
      • Redirecting and anonymizing Collector traffic
      • Redirecting the Collector TCP channel
      • Support for DirectAccess
      • Windows Collector proxy support
      • Mac Collector proxy support
    • Installing the Event Connector
      • Installing the Event Connector on Linux
    • Installing the Finder
      • Installing the Finder on Windows
      • Enabling Cross-Engine Finder features
      • Expanding the time frame of investigations in the Finder
      • Enabling Finder access to the Library
      • Finder proxy support
    • Updating from V6.x
      • Updating the Appliance
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      • Viewing Collector deprecated fields
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    • Security and user account management
      • Importing and replacing certificates
      • Hierarchizing your infrastructure
      • Adding users
      • Enabling SAML authentication of users
      • Just-In-Time provisioning of user accounts
      • Enabling Windows authentication of users
      • Multi-factor authentication for local accounts overview
      • Provisioning user accounts from Active Directory
      • Establishing a privacy policy
      • Disabling local accounts for interactive users
      • Setting the complexity and minimum length of passwords for local accounts
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      • Preventing password saving in the Finder
      • Controlling session timeouts in the Portal
      • Security settings in the Appliance
      • Setting the Do Not Disturb periods between campaigns
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      • Importing data from Microsoft Active Directory
      • Setting the locale in the Portal
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      • Logging in to the CLI
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      • Configuring the system log
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      • Finding out unlicensed devices
      • Removing devices
      • Installing third-party software in the Appliance
      • Installing VMware Tools in the Appliance
      • Operational data sent to Nexthink
      • Sending additional data to Support
    • Disaster recovery
      • Planning for disaster recovery
      • Web Console backup and restore
      • Engine backup and restore
      • Portal backup and restore
      • Rule-based assignment backup and restore
      • License backup and restore
      • PKI backup and restore
    • Branding
      • Branding the Portal
      • Branding of campaigns
  • User manual
    • Getting started
      • Logging in to the Finder
      • Logging in to the Portal
      • Enabling STIG in Webconsole
    • Querying the system
      • Searching the subject of interest
      • Executing an investigation
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      • Combining logical conditions in investigations
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      • Properties of users and devices
    • Visualizing system activity in the Finder
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      • Score XML Reference
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          • [No Choice found in the sys_choice table for the target table](integrations/nexthink-servicenow-service-graph-connector/troubleshooting/ire-identification-issues/ no-choice-found-in-the-sys_choice-table-for-the-target-table.md)
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        • Configure Engines Issues
          • [The client secret supplied for a confidential client is invalid](integrations/nexthink-servicenow-service-graph-connector/troubleshooting/configure-engines-issues/ the-client-secret-supplied-for-a-confidential-client-is-invalid.md)
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On this page
  • Check and disable FIPS mode
  • Partial disaster recovery
  • Full disaster recovery
  • Activating external backups

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  1. Installation and configuration
  2. Disaster recovery

Planning for disaster recovery

Last updated 3 months ago

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The Nexthink Appliance provides you with different backup techniques that allow you to recover from either a partial or a full disaster:

  • A partial disaster is a failure that affects one or several of the server components of Nexthink (Web Console, Engine or Portal), while the Appliance is still accessible.

  • A full disaster is a complete system failure that prevents any further access to the Appliance.

The mechanisms for partial disaster recovery are automatically put in place after the installation of the Appliance. Each one of the server components in the Appliance generates a daily backup of its data for its own recovery. In this way, if any of the components crashes, you can at least get the component back to the state it had the day before the crash.

Full disaster recovery, on the other hand, requires you to save the backups to an external storage device outside the Appliance before total breakdown. You can automate this process by activating the provided mechanism to . If you want to install your own backup tool, first read and follow the recommendations of the article on . Beware that a serious hardware issue in your Appliance can make your data unrecoverable if you do not save it elsewhere.

Check and disable FIPS mode

Perform these steps if the appliance has FIPS mode disabled.

For example, if your initial Nexthink V6 deployment is a version below or equal to 6.30.15.7, then your deployment has FIPS mode disabled.

If the source appliance has FIPS mode disabled, you must also disable FIPS mode on the new appliance before performing the restore procedure.

Check and, if needed, disable FIPS mode:

Step 1.

Run the following command to check whether the appliance is running in FIPS mode:

[ -e /etc/nexthink/fips_mode ] && echo "Appliance is FIPS" || echo "Appliance is NOT FIPS"

Step 2. - Conditional steps

If FIPS mode is enabled, perform the following steps:

  1. Run the following commands:

sudo fips-mode-setup --disablesudo shutdown -r
  1. Restart the system.

  2. Run the following commands to ensure that FIPS mode is disabled:

fips-mode-setup --check
sudo systemctl restart nginx

Partial disaster recovery

In case of a server component malfunction, use its daily backup files for recovery. In addition to the daily backups, the server components make an automatic backup of their data before migration as well. That is useful in the case that the software upgrade process goes wrong.

To learn about the information that is saved during the backup process and how to recover from a partial disaster, read the corresponding documentation for each component:

Full disaster recovery

In addition to the server components, take a backup of the following two items to recover from a full disaster of the primary Appliance:

To perform full recovery:

  1. Download an Appliance ISO with the same version of the Appliance that failed.

  2. Copy the backups to the new Appliance using any SCP client.

  3. Restore the installed server component: Engin

Activating external backups

The Appliance provides a mechanism to automate the saving of backup files to an external SMB share. This mechanism makes a copy of the daily backup of every server component (Web Console, Engine or Portal, including rule-based assignment data, if enabled) to the SMB share right after the backup file is created.

Before activating external backups, you must set up the SMB share:

  1. Configure the user account

  2. Set the permissions on the destination folder

  3. Share the folder

To activate external backups in the Appliance:

  1. Log in to the Web Console as admin from a web browser: https://<IP_address_of_Appliance>:99

  2. Click the Appliance tab at the top of the window.

  3. Select the section External backup from the left-hand side menu. This item only appears in secondary Appliances if the mechanism of external backup has not been centralized

  4. Tick the option Enable daily backups to a SMB share and fill out the form:

    • SMB share path: The path of the shared folder in Windows format, that is: \\server-name\shared-folder\path

    • Username: The name of the user account with the permissions to write to the shared folder.

    • Domain: The name of the domain to which the user account belongs. Leave empty if the user does not have any domain.

    • Password: The password of the user account.

    • Optional: Tick the box Send notification by email to send an email to the recipients specified in the Accounts section under Notifications, each time that the system makes an external backup.

    • Optional: In Copy test file to SMB share, click the COPY button to test the access to the given shared folder.

Note that you can centralize the external backup of secondary Appliances when you federate them. In that way, the secondary Appliance uses the same SMB share as the primary Appliance for external backups.

The files saved in the SMB share for the different components have the following format:

  • Web Console: console-<hostname>-<timestamp>.tgz

  • Engine: nxengine-<instance>-<hostname>-<timestampp>.tgz

  • Portal (main backup and history details of count metrics): portal-<hostname>-<timestamp>.tgzportal-<hostname>-history_YYYYMMDD-<timestamp>.backup

  • Rule-based assignment data: nxassignment-<hostname>-<timestamp>.tgz

For advanced users, it is possible to customize the mount options of the SMB share for external backups. These are the options found after the -o flag of the mount command. By default, the Appliance mounts the SMB share using the options guest and credentials. After activating external backups via the Web Console, set additional mount options for the SMB share by editing the backup config file:

  1. Log into the CLI of the Appliance.

  2. Edit the backup configuration file of the Appliance:

    sudo vi /var/nexthink/common/conf/backup-config.xml
  3. Inside the section BackupDirectory add a new entry to specify one or more additional options, separated by commas: options

  4. Save your changes and exit:

    :wq

The resulting configuration file should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Configuration origin=... >
  <BackupDirectory enabled="true">
    <Server>...
     ...
    <ExtraParameters>options</ExtraParameters>
  </BackupDirectory>
</Configuration>

RELATED TASKS

and

and

and

In case of a total failure of the Appliance, you need to be ready to start anew. As a prerequisite, you must have previously saved the backups of all the server components in the Appliance to an external storage device. Remember that you can automate this process by from the Web Console.

The product license. Since it is not included in the automatic backups, each time that you renew your subscription.

The PKI that secures the TCP communication of the Collectors with the Engines. to avoid having to recreate them and redistribute them to the deployed Collectors.

Install the Appliance following the steps described in .

Choose to install either the Portal or the Engine as described in , depending on the main server component that your Appliance was running.

Restore the Web Console first as described in to set the general parameters of the Appliance.

In the case of a complete failure of the appliance that hosts the Portal, .

e or Portal, as documented in or .

take a backup of the license file
Take a backup of the certificates and keys in the primary Appliance
Installing the Appliance
Restoring the Web Console
restore the license file
Web Console backup and restore
Engine backup and restore
Portal backup and restore
License backup and restore
PKI backup and restore
Rule-based assignment backup and restore
Installing third-party software in the Appliance
installing third-party software in the Appliance
save backup files externally
activating external backups
Web Console restore
Engine automatic backup
Portal automatic backup
Portal restore
Restoring the Portal
Engine & Portal Installation
Web Console automatic backup
Engine restore
Restoring the Engine