Create Remote Archive Volume with Amazon S3

You need a remote archive volume to store your backups. During the installation if you did not create the remote archive volume, you can create it from EXAoperation later. Exasol recommends using S3 bucket to store your backups for Exasol on AWS.

This section explains how you can use an S3 bucket to create a remote archive volume and store your backup.

Prerequisites

You need the following to configure the remote backup in EXAoperation:

  • All nodes must be able to reach the remote target.
  • If DNS names will be used, ensure the cluster has DNS servers configured.
  • You should have a ready S3 bucket. If you don't have the bucket and want to create one, see How Do I Create an S3 Bucket?.
  • You should have the URL of the S3 bucket in the following format:
    • http://bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com/optional-directory/
    • https://bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com/optional-directory/
  • Read-write access to the S3 bucket. In case the nodes are on a private network, you need to assure that an S3 endpoint is configured for your VPC and the route table for your subnet is updated accordingly to store backups in the bucket. For more information, see Endpoints for Amazon S3.
  • Access/ Secret key for the S3 bucket. If you don't have the key and want to create one, see Managing Access Keys for IAM Users.

 

Remote Archive Volume Options

You can use the following volume options (depending on the protocol):

  • cleanvolume: Deletes remote backups on expiry.
  • noverifypeer: Doesn’t check server certificate.
  • nocompression: Writes plain data.
  • forcessl: Uses STARTTLS in FTP connection.
  • webdav: Uses WebDAV for http-URL
  • webhdfs: For WebHDFS URLs
  • s3: For remote archive volumes on Amazon S3.
  • timeout=seconds: Allows higher client/ server response time.

Configure Remote Archive Volume in EXAoperation

Do the following to configure the remote archive volume:

  1. Log in into EXAoperation.
  2. Go to Services > EXAStorage, click Add Remote Volume.

  3. Enter the following details:
    • Archive URL: Use the URL from the S3 bucket that you created in AWS Console.
    • User: If you have configured EC2 instance role, leave this field empty. If not, enter the aws_access_key_id here.
    • Password: If you have configured EC2 instance role, leave this field empty. If not, enter the aws_secret_access_key here.
    • Allowed Users: Select the EXAoperation users that can use the remote archive volume.
    • Read-only Users: Select the EXAoperation users that can read from the remote archive volume.

      Any user that you add as Read-only User, is limited to read-only access even if it's added to the Allowed Users list. If you have only one user that's added into list of allowed user, make sure you don't add the user in the list of Read-only Users.

    • Labels: Add label to the remote archive volume for an easy identification.
    • Options:You can use one of the options mentioned in section Remote Archive Volume Options. For example, cleanvolume option to clean expired backups.
  4. Click Add.

Other Remote Archive Volume Options

Exasol provides the following options to back up your data:

Protocol Archive URL Example
FTP

ftp://ftpserver:12345/optional-directory/

OR

sftp://ftpserver:12345/optional-directory/

SMB smb:////smbserver:12345/optional-directory/
WebHDFS

http://hadoop-server:12345/optional-directory/

OR

https://hadoop-server:12345/optional-directory/

Azure Blob Storage http://storage_container_name.blob.corewindows.net/container_name

OR

https://storage_container_name.blob.corewindows.net/container_name

To know how to use Azure Blob Storage for backup, see Create Remote Archive Volume with Azure Blob Storage.
Google Cloud Storage

http://<bucketname>.storage.googleapis.com

Or

https://<bucketname>.storage.googleapis.com

To know how to use Google Cloud Storage for backup, see Create Remote Archive Volume with Google Cloud Storage .