New to Stash? Please start here.

Restore from Backup

This tutorial will show you how to restore backed up volume using Stash. Here, we are going to recover backed up data into a PVC. Then, we are going to re-deploy the workload using the recovered volume.

Before You Begin

To proceed with this tutorial, you have to meet following requirements:

• At first, you need to have some backup taken by Stash. If you already don’t have any backup repository, create one by following this backup tutorial.

• You need to have the storage Secret that was used to take backup. If you don’t have the Secret, create one with valid credentials.

• You need to have Repository crd that was created for the respective backup. If you have lost the Repository crd, you have to create it manually with respective backend information. Follow, this guide to understand structure of Repository crd.

• You should be familiar with the following Stash concepts:

  • Repository
  • Recovery
  • Snapshot

To keep things isolated, we are going to use a separate namespace called demo throughout this tutorial. Create the namespace if you haven’t created yet.

$ kubectl create ns demo
namespace/demo created

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in /docs/examples/recovery directory of stashed/docs repository.

Overview

The following diagram shows how Stash recovers backed up data from a backend. Open the image in a new tab to see the enlarged version.

The volume recovery backup process consists of the following steps:

1. A user creates a Recovery crd that specifies the target Repository from where he/she want to recover. It also specifies one or more volumes (recoveredVolumes) where the recovered data will be stored.
2. Stash operator watches for new Recovery crds. If it sees one, it checks if the referred Repository crd exists or not.
3. Then, Stash operator creates a Job to recover the backed up data.
4. The recovery Job reads the backend information from Repository crd and the backend credentials from the storage Secret.
5. Then, the recovery Job recovers data from the backend and stores it in the target volume.
6. Finally, the user mounts this recovered volume into the original workload and re-deploys it.

Recovery

Now, we are going to recover backed up data from deployment.stash-demo Repository that was created while taking backup into a PVC named stash-recovered.

At first, let’s delete Restic crd so that it does not lock the repository while are recovering from it. Also, delete stash-demo deployment and stash-sample-data ConfigMap if you followed our backup guide.

$ kubectl delete deployment -n demo stash-demo
deployment.extensions "stash-demo" deleted

$ kubectl delete restic -n demo local-restic
restic.stash.appscode.com "local-restic" deleted

$ kubectl delete configmap -n demo stash-sample-data
configmap "stash-sample-data" deleted

Note: In order to perform recovery, we need Repository crd (in our case deployment.stash-demo) and backend secret (in our case local-secret).

Create PVC:

We are going to recover backed up data into a PVC. At first, we need to know available StorageClass in our cluster.

$ kubectl get storageclass
NAME                 PROVISIONER                AGE
standard (default)   k8s.io/minikube-hostpath   8h

Now, let’s create a PersistentVolumeClaim where our recovered data will be stored.

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2021.06.23/docs/examples/recovery/pvc.yaml
persistentvolumeclaim/stash-recovered created

Here is the definition of the PersistentVolumeClaim we have created above,

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: stash-recovered
  namespace: demo
  labels:
    app: stash-demo
spec:
  storageClassName: standard
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 50Mi

Check whether cluster has provisioned the requested claim.

$ kubectl get pvc -n demo -l app=stash-demo
NAME              STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
stash-recovered   Bound    pvc-e6ffface-fa01-11e8-8905-0800277ca39d   50Mi       RWO            standard       13s

Look at the STATUS filed. stash-recovered PVC is bounded to volume pvc-e6ffface-fa01-11e8-8905-0800277ca39d.

Create Recovery CRD:

Now, we have to create a Recovery crd to recover backed up data into this PVC.

The resource definition of the Recovery crd we are going to create is below:

apiVersion: stash.appscode.com/v1alpha1
kind: Recovery
metadata:
  name: local-recovery
  namespace: demo
spec:
  repository:
    name: deployment.stash-demo
    namespace: demo
  paths:
  - /source/data
  recoveredVolumes:
  - mountPath: /source/data
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: stash-recovered

Here,

• spec.repository.name specifies the name of the Repository crd that represents respective restic repository.
• spec.repository.namespace specifies the namespace of Repository crd.
• spec.paths specifies the file-group paths that were backed up using Restic.
• spec.recoveredVolumes indicates an array of volumes where snapshots will be recovered. Here, mountPath specifies where the volume will be mounted. Note that, Recovery recovers data in the same paths from where the backup was taken (specified in spec.paths). So, volumes must be mounted on those paths or their parent paths.

Let’s create the Recovery crd we have shown above,

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2021.06.23/docs/examples/recovery/recovery.yaml
recovery.stash.appscode.com/local-recovery created

Wait until Recovery job completes its task. To verify that recovery has completed successfully run,

$ kubectl get recovery -n demo local-recovery
NAME             REPOSITORY-NAMESPACE  REPOSITORY-NAME         SNAPSHOT   PHASE       AGE
local-recovery   demo                  deployment.stash-demo              Succeeded   54s

Here, PHASE Succeeded indicates that our recovery has been completed successfully. Backup data has been restored in stash-recovered PVC. Now, we are ready to use this PVC to re-deploy the workload.

If you are using Kubernetes version older than v1.11.0 then run following command and check status.phase field to see whether the recovery succeeded or failed.

$ kubectl get recovery -n demo local-recovery -o yaml

Re-deploy Workload:

We have successfully restored backed up data into stash-recovered PVC. Now, we are going to re-deploy our previous deployment stash-demo. This time, we are going to mount the stash-recovered PVC as source-data volume instead of ConfigMap stash-sample-data.

Below is the YAML for stash-demo deployment with stash-recovered PVC as source-data volume.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app: stash-demo
  name: stash-demo
  namespace: demo
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: stash-demo
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: stash-demo
      name: busybox
    spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - sleep
        - "3600"
        image: busybox
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        name: busybox
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /source/data
          name: source-data
      restartPolicy: Always
      volumes:
      - name: source-data
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: stash-recovered

Let’s create the deployment,

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2021.06.23/docs/examples/recovery/recovered-deployment.yaml
deployment.apps/stash-demo created

Verify Recovered Data:

We have re-deployed stash-demo deployment with recovered volume. Now, it is time to verify that the recovered data are present in /source/data directory.

Get the pod of new deployment,

$ kubectl get pod -n demo -l app=stash-demo
NAME                          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
stash-demo-69694789df-kvcp5   1/1     Running   0          20s

Run following command to view data of /source/data directory of this pod,

$ kubectl exec -n demo stash-demo-69694789df-kvcp5 -- ls -R /source/data
/source/data:
LICENSE
README.md

So, we can see that the data we had backed up from original deployment are now present in re-deployed deployment.

Recover a specific snapshot

With the help of Snapshot object, Stash allows users to recover from a particular snapshot. Here is an example of how to recover from a specific snapshot.

First, list the available snapshots,

$ kubectl get snapshots -n demo -l repository=deployment.stash-demo
NAME                             AGE
deployment.stash-demo-bd8db133   4m50s
deployment.stash-demo-b6e67dee   3m50s
deployment.stash-demo-10790cf0   2m50s
deployment.stash-demo-1ace430f   110s
deployment.stash-demo-baff6c47   50s

Note: If you are using Local backend for storing backup snapshots, your workload must be running to be able to list snapshots.

Below is the YAML for Recovery crd referring to a specific snapshot.

apiVersion: stash.appscode.com/v1alpha1
kind: Recovery
metadata:
  name: local-recovery-specific-snapshot
  namespace: demo
spec:
  repository:
    name: deployment.stash-demo
    namespace: demo
  snapshot: deployment.stash-demo-baff6c47
  paths:
  - /source/data
  recoveredVolumes:
  - mountPath: /source/data
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: stash-recovered

Now, create a Recovery crd shown above,

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2021.06.23/docs/examples/recovery/recovery-specific-snapshot.yaml
recovery.stash.appscode.com/local-recovery-specific-snapshot created

Cleanup

To cleanup the resources created by this tutorial, run following commands:

$ kubectl delete recovery -n demo local-recovery
$ kubectl delete recovery -n demo local-recovery-specific-snapshot
$ kubectl delete secret -n demo local-secret
$ kubectl delete deployment -n demo stash-demo
$ kubectl delete pvc -n demo stash-recovered
$ kubectl delete repository -n demo deployment.stash-demo

$ kubectl delete ns demo

If you would like to uninstall Stash operator, please follow the steps here.

Next Steps

• Learn about the details of Restic CRD here.
• Learn about the details of Recovery CRD here.
• To run backup in offline mode see here
• See the list of supported backends and how to configure them here.
• See working examples for supported workload types here.
• Thinking about monitoring your backup operations? Stash works out-of-the-box with Prometheus.
• Learn about how to configure RBAC roles.