How to restore the cloud-hosted environment

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Posted on by MarinaAX

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Hi there,

Would you be so kind to advise, how restore the cloud-hosted environment which is available in the Lifecycle Services \ Cloud-hosted environments? Our VM is single-tier cloud-hosted environment which is using the Azure SQL as a database. We need to restore only the content of that specific J:\AosService\PackagesLocalDirectory folder.

Many thanks for your help, in advance!

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Finance and Operations

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Sukrut Parab 71,741 Moderator on at

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Any specific reason you want to restore content of J:\AosService\PackagesLocalDirectory ?
Mea_ 60,286 on at

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I have not seen any docs that explains how to do this, but probably you can look at build agent definition, one of the steps is a restore of PackagesLocalDirectory folder from a backup. Another option is to provision new VM and use a backup of existing DB and code from VSTS.
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MarinaAX 730 on at

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Hi Sukrut and Ievgen,

Thank you very much for your attention to my inquiry.

I had to implement the disaster recovery. I was unable to find the proper set of the changesets which I could rollback to resolve full model build issue so I decided to proceed with the restoration. Unfortunately, the environment which required the recovery was unique and I had nowhere to get PackagesLocalDirectory from. So here are the high-level instructions which you need to perform if you don't have a local copy (i.e. PackagesLocalDirectory):

To restore the PackagesLocalDirectory

Rollback the VM using the Azure recovery services: I've got a hold of the admins of our environment to perform that.

To restore AxDB (Optional, because that particular environment used the Azure SQL based AXDB file)

Use Service requests link in the main page of the LCS project and create Request for database point-in-time restore (Restore a database on a non-production environment).

Again, Sukrut and Ievgen, thanks a lot for your constant help!
Mea_ 60,286 on at

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That's strange, if you have ever installed a package there you should have backup of PackagesLocalDirectory folder, because it is one of the steps of the package installation.
MarinaAX 730 on at

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The problem with this particular environment is that it is used for ISV integration testing.

Deploy ISV solution in it.

Check-in code with the ISV solution in the VSTS.

Merge forward the checked in changeset to another environment.

Generate deployable package of that environment in the separate build environment.

I did find a reference about a backup in the Prepare for build in the VSTS log for the build definition which generated the deployable package from the merged forward changeset(s), but that reference points to AxDBBackup.bak only which we don't need. And as I wrote earlier: our problematic environment is the ISV integration environment and serves as a source of the changesets. We never deploy any packages in it.

2017-08-1T23:14:51.9587261Z VERBOSE: 11:14:51 PM: - Found backup path: I:\DynamicsBackup
2017-08-1T23:14:51.9944428Z 11:14:51 PM: A backup already exists at: I:\DynamicsBackup\Databases\AxDBBackup.bak. No new backup will be created.

Ievgen, would you be so kind to advise where I should look for the backed up PackagesLocalDirectory in the VSTS, LCS or elsewhere?
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Mea_ 60,286 on at

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So for my Tier-2 environments I have a folder DeployablePackages on F drive, where I can find folders for each package I installed. Inside of these folders you have F:\DeployablePackages\[guid]\RunbookWorkingFolder\[guid]\[AOS NAME]\AOSService\[STEP NUMBER]\Backup\packages\ where you can find a backup.
MarinaAX 730 on at

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Thank you very much for the extremely useful information, Ievgen!!! Although, I was unable to benefit in my current situation, this is an extremely elegant alternative to the Azure backup/restore!
PilgrimCZ 572 on at

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Hi MarinaAX,

how you can rollback VM using the Azure recovery service on Microsoft cloud-hosted environment, when you do not have access to these subscriptions? We talk about Tier 2 and Add-On machines.

Thank you for explenation.

Marek
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MarinaAX 730 on at

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Ahoj Marek,

You asked about the restore scenario

I would not recommend to restore the VM from the backup particularly the 2 tier, because it is extremely prone to errors. Also that restore may not be supported.

Instead, I would recommend rolling out a new vanilla environment and deploying the latest packages (Microsoft PU, then the last known good deployable package, and then the data with the subsequent database synchronization.

We gave up the idea of using the Azure backups.

If you can't get to the LCS then you need to get somebody who can, otherwise such situation looks fishy :)

If you wish to experiment, you may find the following Microsoft article interesting:

Use the Azure portal to restore virtual machines https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-arm-restore-vms

However, we have not been successful using it and just implemented a quicker solution which I outlined in item 1.

Please advise what approach worked for you!

Čau!