Create Remote Archive Volume

In Exasol, backups can be stored online in an archive volume (local archive volume) or on a remote archive volume. This section provides you with information on how to create a remote archive volume.

Prerequisites

You need the following to configure the remote backup :

  • All nodes must be able to reach the remote target.
  • The user must have read-write access to the remote server
  • The URL of the archive volume as described in Create Remote Archive Volume.

Procedure

This procedure is carried out using ConfD.

The ConfD examples are written in Bash on a Linux terminal running the Exasol tool confd_client, which is accessed by connecting to EXAClusterOS on the database nodes using Exasol Deployment Tool (c4). You can also interact with ConfD from an external tool using Python and XML-RPC. For more information, see ConfD.

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

  1. Connect to EXAClusterOS (COS) using c4 connect -t<DEPLOYMENT>/cos. For example:

    c4 connect -t1/cos

    If you do not specify a node, you will normally be connected to the first node in the deployment. If the cluster is configured with an access node, the first node is the access node (usually n10). The COS command prompt indicates which node you are currently connected to. 

    [root@n10 ~]#

    For more information about c4 commands, see Exasol Deployment Tool (c4).

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

    confd_client -c db_list

  3. Each remote archive volume must be created with the same owner as the database which will write backups to the volume. To find the owner's name, use the ConfD job db_info and replace DATABASE_NAME with your database name. For example:

    confd_client -c db_info -a 'db_name: DATABASE_NAME' | grep owner -A 2

    4. The output is similar to the following:

    owner:
    - 500
    - 500

  4. To create a remote archive volume, use the ConfD job remote_volume_add and insert the appropriate values that you found in the previous steps. 

    confd_client -c remote_volume_add -a '{url: ARCHIVE_VOLUME_URL, vol_type: TYPE, username: VOLUME_USERNAME, password: VOLUME_PW, owner: OWNER_TUPLE}'

    For example, a remote archive volume to an S3 bucket looks like:

    confd_client -c remote_volume_add -a '{url: https://BUCKET_NAME.s3.amazonaws.com, vol_type: s3, username: ACCESS_KEY_ID, password: ACCESS_KEY, owner: [500,500]}'

Verification

You can verify the volume was created by finding the volume ID and then checking its properties. To find the volume ID, use the ConfD job remote_volume_list:

confd_client -c remote_volume_list

The output is similar to the following:

- r0001

To check the properties of the remote archive volume, use the ConfD job remote_volume_info and insert the name of the volume. For example:

confd_client -c remote_volume_info -a 'remote_volume_name: r0001'