Create Backup Schedule

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

For Exasol 8 2025.1.0 and later, you can use Exasol Admin for this procedure. For earlier versions, you must use ConfD.

Prerequisites

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

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

Do not modify the archive volume or the data volume while a backup is in progress.

Procedure - Exasol Admin

Log in to Exasol Admin and open the Schedules page.

This page lists all the existing schedules. You can create, delete, enable and disable schedules as needed.

schedules list

Create a schedule

  1. Click on the + icon at the top of the list.

    add new schedule

  2. Enter the required details in the Add schedule dialog.

    Name A name to identify the schedule
    Database The database that the backup will run on
    Volumes The archive volume to use
    Levels The backup level
    Frequency When and how often the backup will run
    Expiration (optional) An expiration time for the backup

    add schedule dialog

  3. Click on Add to create the schedule.

Enable or disable a schedule

Schedules that are disabled will not run and are greyed out in the list. If you enable a disabled schedule, it will run at the next scheduled time.

To toggle a schedule between enabled and disabled, click on the Enabled button.

schedules list with one schedule disabled

 

Procedure - ConfD

This procedure uses 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 the cluster operating system (COS) using c4 connect -i PLAY_ID -s cos.

    Example:
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    ./c4 connect -i c3275f84 -s cos

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

  2. To find the database name when you are connected to COS, use the ConfD job db_list.

    Example:
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    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:

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    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”.

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    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:

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    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”.

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    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:

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    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
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    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.

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confd_client db_info db_name: MY_DATABASE

Example output:

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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'