Comprehensive and Detailed 250 to 350 words of Explanation From VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) documents:
A critical requirement for the backup and restore process inVMware NSX(and by extension, VCF) is version parity. The NSX Manager backup contains the database schema, configuration files, and state information specific to the version of the software that was running at the time the backup was taken.
When performing a restore into a "clean" environment, the NSX documentation explicitly states that the target NSX Manager appliancemust be of the exact same build versionas the appliance that generated the backup. If an administrator attempts to restore a backup from version 4.1.x onto a newly deployed manager running version 4.2.x or 9.0 (as implies by "latest version"), the restore process will fail because the database schema of the newer version is incompatible with the older data structure.
In aVCF environment, whileSDDC Manager(Option B) handles the lifecycle and replacement of failed nodes, the actual "Restore from Backup" workflow is an NSX-native operation. If the entire cluster is lost, the recovery procedure involves:
Identifying the build number from the backup metadata.
Deploying a single "Discovery" node of that exact build.
Pointing that node to the backup repository (SFTP/FTP).
Executing the restore.
Once the primary node is restored to the correct version, the administrator can then add additional nodes to reform the cluster. Attempting to use the API (Option C) or changing the passphrase (Option A) will not bypass the fundamental requirement for version alignment between the backup file and the installed binary.
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