You are looking at the documentation of a prior release. To read the documentation of the latest release, please visit here.

Don’t know how backup works? Check tutorial on Instant Backup.

Database Scheduled Snapshots

KubeDB supports taking periodic backups for Elasticsearch database.

Before you begin

At first, you need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using Minikube.

Now, install KubeDB cli on your workstation and KubeDB operator in your cluster following the steps here.

To keep things isolated, this tutorial uses a separate namespace called demo throughout this tutorial.

$ kubectl create ns demo
namespace "demo" created

$ kubectl get ns demo
NAME    STATUS  AGE
demo    Active  5s

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in docs/examples/elasticsearch folder in GitHub repository kubedb/docs.

Create Elasticsearch with BackupSchedule

KubeDB supports taking periodic backups for a database using a cron expression. KubeDB operator will launch a Job periodically that takes backup and uploads the output files to various cloud providers S3, GCS, Azure, OpenStack Swift and/or locally mounted volumes using osm.

In this tutorial, snapshots will be stored in a Google Cloud Storage (GCS) bucket. To do so, a secret is needed that has the following 2 keys:

Key	Description
`GOOGLE_PROJECT_ID`	`Required`. Google Cloud project ID
`GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON_KEY`	`Required`. Google Cloud service account json key

$ echo -n '<your-project-id>' > GOOGLE_PROJECT_ID
$ mv downloaded-sa-json.key > GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON_KEY
$ kubectl create secret -n demo generic gcs-secret \
    --from-file=./GOOGLE_PROJECT_ID \
    --from-file=./GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON_KEY
secret "gcs-secret" created

To learn how to configure other storage destinations for Snapshots, please visit here.

Below is the Elasticsearch object with BackupSchedule field.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: scheduled-es
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "6.3-v1"
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  backupSchedule:
    cronExpression: "@every 6h"
    storageSecretName: gcs-secret
    gcs:
      bucket: kubedb

Here,

cronExpression represents a set of times or interval when a single backup will be created.
storageSecretName points to the Secret containing the credentials for snapshot storage destination.
gcs.bucket points to the bucket name used to store the snapshot data

Note: Secret object must be in the same namespace as Elasticsearch, scheduled-es, in this case.

$ kubectl create -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v0.13.0-rc.0/docs/examples/elasticsearch/snapshot/scheduled-es.yaml
elasticsearch.kubedb.com/scheduled-es created

When Elasticsearch starts running successfully, KubeDB operator creates a Snapshot object immediately and registers to create a new Snapshot object on each tick of the cron expression.

$ kubectl get snap -n demo --selector="kubedb.com/kind=Elasticsearch,kubedb.com/name=scheduled-es"
NAME                           DATABASENAME   STATUS    AGE
scheduled-es-20181005-120106   scheduled-es   Running   3s

Update Elasticsearch to disable periodic backups

If you already have a running Elasticsearch that takes backup periodically, you can disable that by removing BackupSchedule field.

Edit your Elasticsearch object and remove BackupSchedule. This will stop taking future backups for this schedule.

$ kubectl edit es -n demo scheduled-es
spec:
#  backupSchedule:
#    cronExpression: '@every 6h'
#    gcs:
#      bucket: kubedb
#    storageSecretName: gcs-secret

Update Elasticsearch to enable periodic backups

If you already have a running Elasticsearch, you can enable periodic backups by adding BackupSchedule.

Edit the Elasticsearch scheduled-es to add following spec.backupSchedule section.

$ kubectl edit es scheduled-es -n demo
  backupSchedule:
    cronExpression: "@every 6h"
    storageSecretName: gcs-secret
    gcs:
      bucket: kubedb

Once the spec.backupSchedule is added, KubeDB operator creates a Snapshot object immediately and registers to create a new Snapshot object on each tick of the cron expression.

$ kubectl get snap -n demo --selector=kubedb.com/kind=Elasticsearch,kubedb.com/name=scheduled-es
NAME                           DATABASE          STATUS      AGE
scheduled-es-20180214-095019   es/scheduled-es   Succeeded   17m
scheduled-es-20180214-100711   es/scheduled-es   Running     9s

Customizing `backupSchedule`

You can customize pod template spec and volume claim spec for the backup jobs by customizing backupSchedule section.

Some common customization examples are shown below:

Specify PVC Template:

Backup jobs use temporary storage to hold dump files before it can be uploaded to cloud backend. By default, KubeDB reads storage specification from spec.storage section of database crd and creates a PVC with similar specification for backup job. However, if you want to specify a custom PVC template, you can do it through spec.backupSchedule.podVolumeClaimSpec field. This is particularly helpful when you want to use different storageclass for backup jobs and the database.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: scheduled-es
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "6.3-v1"
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  backupSchedule:
    cronExpression: "@every 6h"
    storageSecretName: gcs-secret
    gcs:
      bucket: kubedb-dev
    podVolumeClaimSpec:
      storageClassName: "standard"
      accessModes:
      - ReadWriteOnce
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 1Gi # make sure size is larger or equal than your database size

Specify Resources for Backup Jobs:

You can specify resources for backup jobs through spec.backupSchedule.podTemplate.spec.resources field.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: scheduled-es
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "6.3-v1"
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  backupSchedule:
    cronExpression: "@every 6h"
    storageSecretName: gcs-secret
    gcs:
      bucket: kubedb-dev
    podTemplate:
      spec:
        resources:
          requests:
            memory: "64Mi"
            cpu: "250m"
          limits:
            memory: "128Mi"
            cpu: "500m"

Provide Annotations for Backup Jobs:

If you need to add some annotations to backup jobs, you can specify those in spec.backupSchedule.podTemplate.controller.annotations. You can also specify annotations for the pod created by backup jobs in spec.backupSchedule.podTemplate.annotations field.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: scheduled-es
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "6.3-v1"
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  backupSchedule:
    cronExpression: "@every 6h"
    storageSecretName: gcs-secret
    gcs:
      bucket: kubedb-dev
    podTemplate:
      annotations:
        passMe: ToBackupJobPod
      controller:
        annotations:
          passMe: ToBackupJob

Pass Arguments to Backup Jobs:

KubeDB allows users to pass extra arguments for backup jobs. You can provide these arguments via spec.backupSchedule.podTemplate.spec.args field of a Snapshot crd.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: scheduled-es
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "6.3-v1"
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  backupSchedule:
    cronExpression: "@every 6h"
    storageSecretName: gcs-secret
    gcs:
      bucket: kubedb-dev
    podTemplate:
      spec:
        args:
        - --extra-args-to-backup-command

Cleaning up

To cleanup the Kubernetes resources created by this tutorial, run:

$ kubectl patch -n demo es/scheduled-es -p '{"spec":{"terminationPolicy":"WipeOut"}}' --type="merge"
$ kubectl delete -n demo es/scheduled-es

$ kubectl delete ns demo

Next Steps

See the list of supported storage providers for snapshots here.
Learn about initializing Elasticsearch with Snapshot.
Learn how to configure Elasticsearch Topology.
Monitor your Elasticsearch database with KubeDB using out-of-the-box builtin-Prometheus.
Monitor your Elasticsearch database with KubeDB using out-of-the-box CoreOS Prometheus Operator.
Use private Docker registry to deploy Elasticsearch with KubeDB.
Want to hack on KubeDB? Check our contribution guidelines.

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