rightscale_backup cookbook

This cookbook provides a rightscale_backup resource that can create,
restore, and clean up block device storage ("volume") backups on numerous
public and private IaaS clouds.

A backup represents a collection of volume snapshots taken at the same
time from one or more volumes attached to the server. A backup belongs
to a series of backups, called the "lineage". Maintaining a lineage allows for
point-in-time data recovery using timestamps (even if the snapshots are taken from
different volumes). It also supports a more sophisticated algorithm for backup
rotation/retention, as opposed to simple snapshot truncation.

The rightscale_backup resource uses RightScale's instance-facing API to
manage backups in the cloud.

Github Repository: https://github.com/rightscale-cookbooks/rightscale_backup

Requirements

• The system being configured must be a RightScale managed VM to have the required access to the RightScale API.
• Chef 11 or higher.
• Requires a RightScale account that is registered with all the cloud vendors you expect to provision on (e.g. AWS, Rackspace, Openstack, CloudStack, GCE, and Azure).
• Cookbook dependencies
  • rightscale_volume

Usage

This resource only handles manipulating volume backups. Managing volumes is
handled by the rightscale_volume resource.

Example 1: Creates and attaches 2 volumes using the rightscale_volume resource,
and then takes a backup of the volumes using the rightscale_backup resource.

# Creates and attaches two 1 GB volumes
2.times do |count|
  rightscale_volume "db_data_volume_#{count}" do
    size 1
    action [:create, :attach]
  end
end

# Backs up the two volumes to a 'db_backup_lineage' lineage
rightscale_backup "db_data_volume_backup" do
  lineage 'db_backup_lineage'
  action :create
end

Example 2: Restores the backup (created in Example 1) to the server

# Restores the latest backup in the 'db_backup_lineage' taken on or before
# the UNIX timestamp '1391118125'
rightscale_backup "db_data_volume_backup" do
  lineage 'db_backup_lineage'
  timestamp 1391118125
  action :restore
end

Example 3: Deletes old backups

# Deletes old backups from the 'db_backup_lineage' lineage. After this action
# there will be only 2 backups in the cloud.
rightscale_backup "db_data_volume_backup" do
  lineage 'db_backup_lineage'
  keep_last 2
  monthlies 1
  yearlies 1
  dailies 1
  weeklies 1
  action :cleanup
end

Recipes

default

The default recipe installs the right_api_client gem to make
instance-facing RightScale API calls.

Resource/Providers

rightscale_backup

A resource to create, restore, and cleanup backups in the cloud.

Actions

Attributes

:create Action

Creates a snapshot for every volume attached to the server. The newly created snapshot will be tagged with the following

• rs_backup:lineage=<string> - Lineage name of the backup
• rs_backup:backup_id=<UUID> - Unique identifier for a backup (all snapshots in a backup will share this ID)
• rs_backup:committed=true - The backup is committed
• rs_backup:count=X - Number of snapshots in the backup
• rs_backup:device=<device> - Device to which the volume was attached
• rs_backup:position=Y - Position of the snapshot in a backup
• rs_backup:timestamp=<timestamp> - Time at which the backup was taken A backup is considered a perfect backup when it is completed (all the snapshots are completed), committed (all the snapshots are committed), and the number of snapshots it found is equal to the number in the "rs_backup:count=" tag on each of the snapshots.

:restore Action

Restores a backup from the cloud. This will

• create a volume for each snapshot in the backup
• attach all the created volumes to the server at the device specified in the snapshot (obtained from rs_backup:device=). NOTE: If the devices are already being used on the server, the restore will fail.

:cleanup Action

Deletes old backups from the cloud. For all the perfect backups, the constraints of
keep_last, dailies, weeklies, monthlies, and yearlies attributes will be applied
(See 'Parameters' section below). The algorithm for choosing the backups to keep is
enforced by the RightScale API which is the union of those set of backups if each of
those conditions are applied independently.

backups_to_keep = backups_to_keep(keep_last) U backups_to_keep(dailies) U
backups_to_keep(weeklies) U backups_to_keep(monthlies) U backups_to_keep(yearlies)

An imperfect backup is picked up for clean up only if there exists a perfect backup
with a newer timestamp. No constraints will be applied on imperfect backups and all
of them will be cleaned up.

Author

Author:: RightScale, Inc. (cookbooks@rightscale.com)