Back up managed devices

You can perform on-demand or scheduled backups for supported Secure Firewall Threat Defense devices using Cloud-Delivered Firewall Management Center without a backup profile.

When to back up

  • Back up during a maintenance window or other time of low use.

  • As part of your disaster recovery plan, perform periodic backups (on-demand or scheduled).

  • Before a device upgrade or reimage.

    If an upgrade fails catastrophically, you may have to reimage and restore. Reimaging returns most settings to factory defaults, including the system password. If you have a recent backup, you can return to normal operations more quickly.

  • After a device upgrade. Back up the device after you upgrade, so that you have a freshly upgraded device backup.

Securing backup files

Backup files are stored as unencrypted archive (.tar) files; they should be stored in a secure repository.

Private keys in PKI objects, which represent the public key certificates and paired private keys that are required to support your deployment are decrypted before they are backed up. The keys are reencrypted with a randomly generated key when you restore the backup.