Create Backup Schedule

This article explains how to create a schedule to automatically start backups.

Backup scheduling is based on full backups and incremental backups. For more information, see Backup Essentials.

This procedure is carried out using ConfD.

Prerequisites

You must have an archive volume for the backups. For more information, see Create Local Archive Volume or Create Remote Archive Volume.

Procedure

Do not add or remove nodes on the archive volume or on the data volume being backed up while a backup is in progress.

Do not stop the database while a backup is in progress.

The following examples use ConfD through the command-line tool confd_client, which is available on all database nodes. For more information, see ConfD.

Placeholder values are indicated with UPPERCASE characters. Replace the placeholders with your own values.

  1. Connect to EXAClusterOS (COS) on the cluster using c4 connect -t <DEPLOYMENT>[.<NODE>]/cos. For example:

    ./c4 connect -t 1.11/cos

    If you do not specify a node, c4 will connect to the first active node in the deployment.

    For more information about how to use c4 connect, see How to use c4.

  2. To find the name of the database, use the ConfD job db_list. For example:

    confd_client db_list
    - MY_DATABASE

  3. To find information about available archive volumes:

    Remote archive volumes

    To find the names of available remote archive volumes, use the ConfD job remote_volume_list:

    confd_client remote_volume_list

    To find the volume ID of a remote archive volume, use the ConfD job remote_volume_info. The ID is stored under “vid”. 

    confd_client remote_volume_info remote_volume_name: VOLUME_NAME

    Remote archive volume IDs typically start at 10001.

    See also Create Remote Archive Volume.

    Local archive volumes

    To find the names of available local archive volumes, use the ConfD job st_volume_list:

    confd_client st_volume_list | grep name

    To find the volume ID of a local archive volume, use the ConfD job st_volume_info. The ID is stored under “id”.

    confd_client st_volume_info vname: VOLUME_NAME

    See also Create Local Archive Volume.

    You can also use the Administration API to get information about the database, archive volumes, and existing backups. For more information, see List Backups.

  4. To create the backup schedule, use the ConfD job db_backup_add_schedule.

    If a local archive volume runs out of free space, expired backups will be automatically deleted. Expired remote archive volumes will not be deleted by this function.

    A common backup schedule is a weekly backup with an expiration of 10 days and incremental backups Monday - Saturday with an expiration time of 3 days. To set up this configuration, create two backup schedules. For example:

    confd_client db_backup_add_schedule db_name: MY_DATABASE backup_name: weekly_full_backup backup_volume_name: VOLUME_NAME enabled: true level: 0 expire: '1w 3d'  minute: 0 hour: 0 day: '*' month: '*' weekday: 0
    confd_client db_backup_add_schedule db_name: MY_DATABASE backup_name: daily_incremental backup_volume_name: VOLUME_NAME enabled: true level: 1 expire: '3d'  minute: 0 hour: 0 day: '*' month: '*' weekday: '1,2,3,4,5,6'

Verification

To verify that the schedule was created, use the ConfD job db_info. Information about backups is found in the config: section.

confd_client db_info db_name: MY_DATABASE

Example output:

config:
  _sec_name: 'DB : Exasol'
  auto_start: true
  backups:
    daily_incremental:
      day: '*'
      enabled: true
      expire: 259200
      hour: '0'
      level: 1
      minute: '0'
      month: '*'
      volume: r0002
      weekday: 1,2,3,4,5,6
    weekly_full_backup:
      day: '*'
      enabled: true
      expire: 864000
      hour: '0'
      level: 0
      minute: '0'
      month: '*'
      volume: r0002
      weekday: '0'