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How do you test Sophos XG Backups?

GavinDaniels

Hello All,

I am interested in how people may be testing and verifying the config backups from Sophos XG Firewalls.

I have my customers units email me a backup of the config on a weekly basis, and I just rely on them being recoverable. But after having a failed upgrade, and looking to revert to the last backup, I found that using the last couple of backup files resulted in putting the firewall in 'Fail Safe Mode'

I went back a couple more weeks and found the backups from then were functional.

But it does put into question how to test the backup files, and ensure that they are going to be usable in the event of an issue.



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  • 0 in reply to LuCar Toni

    Hello Toni,

    A wealth of information as always.

    But there are some shortcomings in this approach. And there really needs to be a better way of testing.

    I can keep my old XG125 and use it to test backups of most of the devices, but for my customers who have XG210, XG230, and XG310 it becomes difficult.

    I have a customer with an XG230 which was running 17.5.MR9. I did an upgrade to 17.5.MR14-1 and it failed the upgrade. I tried to revert it back to 17.5.MR9 and it remained in FailSafe mode.

    Reset to factory defaults, and the unit would start with V17.5.MR14-1

    Restore the last automatic backup into the fresh unit, Crashes and goes back into Failsafe Mode.

    Given that there is no easy documentation extract from an XG (something else I have pointed out on many occasions) things were looking bad.

    Try a backup from 8 weeks ago, and this one restores fine. Keep resetting the unit and trying other backups, and find that 3 weeks ago was when the backups stated being corrupt.

    What was changed 3 weeks ago? Enabled One Time Passwords and attached them to IPSec VPN usage.

    I think that a VM Player image or Hyper-V image of a hardware model which can have a backup restored to for testing would be an advantage. It would also allow for being able to factory reset a unit and then rebuild it from a visible inspection.

    But I will be speaking with my account manager about the loan of a unit during the Xmas - New Year period so I can do a restore of the current backups, so I can ensure that they are not corrupt.

    And then use my expired XG125 for testing the other backups I have.