Using Dedicated Namespace for Storage

This guide will show you how to take backup and restore by keeping the storage resources (Repository and backend Secret) in a dedicated namespace using Stash.

Before You Begin

At first, you need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.
Install Stash in your cluster following the steps here.
You should be familiar with the following Stash concepts:

We are going to take a backup from the prod namespace and restore it to the staging namespace. We are going to keep our Repository and the backend Secret in the storage namespace.

Let’s create the above-mentioned namespaces,

$ kubectl create ns prod
namespace/prod created

$ kubectl create ns staging
namespace/staging created

$ kubectl create ns storage
namespace/storage created

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial can be found here.

Backup from `prod` Namespace

This section will demonstrate taking backup of the volumes of a StatefulSet from the prod namespace using Stash.

Deploy Workload

Let’s deploy a StatefulSet in the prod namespace at the beginning. This StatefulSet will automatically generate sample data in the /source/data directory.

Here is the YAML of the StatefulSet that we are going to create,

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: headless
  namespace: prod
spec:
  ports:
  - name: http
    port: 80
    targetPort: 0
  selector:
    app: stash-demo
  clusterIP: None
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
  name: stash-demo
  namespace: prod
  labels:
    app: stash-demo
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: stash-demo
  serviceName: headless
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: stash-demo
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: busybox
        image: busybox
        command: ["/bin/sh", "-c","echo $(POD_NAME) > /source/data/data.txt && sleep 3000"]
        env:
        - name:  POD_NAME
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath:  metadata.name
        volumeMounts:
        - name: source-data
          mountPath: "/source/data"
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  volumeClaimTemplates:
  - metadata:
      name: source-data
    spec:
      accessModes: [ "ReadWriteOnce" ]
      storageClassName: "standard"
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 1Gi

Let’s create the StatefulSet we have shown above.

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2023.02.28/docs/guides/managed-backup/dedicated-storage-namespace/examples/statefulset.yaml
service/headless created
statefulset.apps/stash-demo created

Now, wait for the pods of the StatefulSet to go into the Running state. You can verify the Status of the pods by executing the following command,

$ kubectl get pod -n prod
NAME           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
stash-demo-0   1/1     Running   0          42s
stash-demo-1   1/1     Running   0          40s
stash-demo-2   1/1     Running   0          36s

Verify that the sample data has been generated in /source/data directory for stash-demo-0 , stash-demo-1 and stash-demo-2 pod respectively using the following commands,

$ kubectl exec -n prod stash-demo-0 -- cat /source/data/data.txt
stash-demo-0
$ kubectl exec -n prod stash-demo-1 -- cat /source/data/data.txt
stash-demo-1
$ kubectl exec -n prod stash-demo-2 -- cat /source/data/data.txt
stash-demo-2

Prepare Backend

We are going to store our backed-up data into a GCS bucket. We have to create a Secret with the necessary credentials and a Repository object to use this backend.

If you want to use a different backend, please read the doc here.

For the GCS backend, if the bucket does not exist, Stash needs Storage Object Admin role permissions to create the bucket. For more details, please check the following guide.

Create Secret:

Let’s create a secret called gcs-secret in storage namespace with access credentials to our desired GCS bucket,

$ echo -n 'changeit' > RESTIC_PASSWORD
$ echo -n '<your-project-id>' > GOOGLE_PROJECT_ID
$ cat /path/to/downloaded-sa-key.json > GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON_KEY
$ kubectl create secret generic -n storage gcs-secret \
    --from-file=./RESTIC_PASSWORD \
    --from-file=./GOOGLE_PROJECT_ID \
    --from-file=./GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON_KEY
secret/gcs-secret created

Create Repository:

Now, create a Repository using the above Secret in the storage namespace. Below is the YAML of Repository object we are going to create,

apiVersion: stash.appscode.com/v1alpha1
kind: Repository
metadata:
  name: gcs-repo
  namespace: storage
spec:
  backend:
    gcs:
      bucket: stash-testing
      prefix: /cross-namespace/data/sample-statefulset
    storageSecretName: gcs-secret
  usagePolicy:
    allowedNamespaces:
      from: All

Notice the spec.usagePolicy section. Here, we are allowing all namespaces to refer to this repository. You can restrict this capability to a particular namespace or a group of namespaces. For more details, please follow the guide from here.

Let’s create the Repository we have shown above,

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2023.02.28/docs/guides/managed-backup/dedicated-storage-namespace/examples/repository.yaml
repository.stash.appscode.com/gcs-repo created

Now, we are ready to backup our sample data into this backend.

Configure Backup

We are going to create a BackupConfiguration object in the prod namespace targeting the stash-demo StatefulSet. This BackupConfiguration will refer to the gcs-repo repository of the storage namespace. Stash will inject a sidecar container into the target. It will also create a CronJob to take periodic backup of the /source/data directory of the target.

Create BackupConfiguration:

Below is the YAML of the BackupConfiguration object that we are going to create,

apiVersion: stash.appscode.com/v1beta1
kind: BackupConfiguration
metadata:
  name: ss-backup
  namespace: prod
spec:
  repository:
    name: gcs-repo
    namespace: storage
  schedule: "*/5 * * * *"
  target:
    ref:
      apiVersion: apps/v1
      kind: StatefulSet
      name: stash-demo
    volumeMounts:
    - name: source-data
      mountPath: /source/data
    paths:
    - /source/data
  retentionPolicy:
    name: 'keep-last-5'
    keepLast: 5
    prune: true

Here,

spec.repository.name refers to the Repository object that holds backend information.
spec.repository.namespace refers to the namespace of the Repository object.
spec.schedule is a cron expression that indicates BackupSession will be created at 5 minutes intervals.
spec.target.ref refers to the stash-demo StatefulSet.
spec.target.volumeMounts specifies a list of volumes and their mountPath that contain the target paths.
spec.target.paths specifies list of file paths to backup.

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

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2023.02.28/docs/guides/managed-backup/dedicated-storage-namespace/examples/backupconfiguration.yaml
backupconfiguration.stash.appscode.com/ss-backup created

Verify BackupConfiguration Ready:

If everything goes well, the phase of the BackupConfiguration should be Ready. Let’s check the BackupConfiguration Phase,

❯ kubectl get backupconfiguration -n prod
NAME        TASK   SCHEDULE      PAUSED   PHASE   AGE
ss-backup          */5 * * * *            Ready   13s

Verify CronJob:

Stash will also create a CronJob with the schedule specified in the spec.schedule field of the BackupConfiguration object.

Verify that the CronJob has been created using the following command,

$ kubectl get cronjob -n  prod
NAME                      SCHEDULE      SUSPEND   ACTIVE   LAST SCHEDULE   AGE
stash-trigger-ss-backup   */5 * * * *   False     0        4m55s           3m14s

Verify Backup

The stash-trigger-ss-backup CronJob will trigger a backup on each scheduled slot by creating a BackupSession object. The sidecar container watches for the BackupSession object. When it finds one, it will take backup immediately.

Wait for the next schedule for the backup. Run the following command to watch the BackupSession object,

$ kubectl get backupsession -n prod -w

NAME                   INVOKER-TYPE          INVOKER-NAME    PHASE        DURATION   AGE
ss-backup-1644562803   BackupConfiguration   ss-backup       Running                 18s
ss-backup-1644562803   BackupConfiguration   ss-backup       Running                 34s
ss-backup-1644562803   BackupConfiguration   ss-backup       Succeeded    1m21s      81s

We can see from the above output that the backup session has succeeded.

Restore into `staging` Namespace

This section will demonstrate restoring the backed-up volumes into the staging namespace using Stash.

Stop Taking Backup of the Old StatefulSet:

At first, let’s stop taking any further backup of the old StatefulSet. We are going to pause the BackupConfiguration that we created earlier. You can learn more how to pause a scheduled backup here

Let’s pause the ss-backup BackupConfiguration,

$ kubectl patch backupconfiguration -n prod ss-backup --type="merge" --patch='{"spec": {"paused": true}}'
backupconfiguration.stash.appscode.com/ss-backup patched

You can also use the Stash kubectl plugin to pause the backup like the following,

$ kubectl stash pause backup --backupconfig=ss-backup -n prod
BackupConfiguration demo/deployment-backup has been paused successfully.

Verify that the BackupConfiguration has been paused,

$ kubectl get backupconfiguration -n prod
NAME        TASK   SCHEDULE      PAUSED   PHASE   AGE
ss-backup          */5 * * * *   true     Ready   53m

Notice the PAUSED column. Value true indicates that the BackupConfiguration has been paused.

Deploy Restore Workload

We are going to create a new StatefulSet named stash-recovered and restore the backed-up data inside it.

Below is the YAML of the StatefulSet that we are going to create,

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: re-headless
  namespace: staging
spec:
  ports:
  - name: http
    port: 80
    targetPort: 0
  selector:
    app: stash-recovered
  clusterIP: None
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
  name: stash-recovered
  namespace: staging
  labels:
    app: stash-recovered
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: stash-recovered
  serviceName: re-headless
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: stash-recovered
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: busybox
        image: busybox
        command:
        - sleep
        - '3600'
        volumeMounts:
        - name: source-data
          mountPath: "/source/data"
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  volumeClaimTemplates:
  - metadata:
      name: source-data
    spec:
      accessModes: [ "ReadWriteOnce" ]
      storageClassName: "standard"
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 1Gi

Let’s create the StatefulSet we have shown above.

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2023.02.28/docs/guides/managed-backup/dedicated-storage-namespace/examples/statefulset_recovered.yaml
service/re-headless created
statefulset.apps/stash-recovered created

Configure Restore

Now, we need to create a RestoreSession object targeting the stash-recovered StatefulSet to restore the backed-up data inside it. Similar to the BackupConfiguration, we will use the Repository of storage namespace here.

Create RestoreSession:

Below is the YAML of the RestoreSesion object that we are going to create,

apiVersion: stash.appscode.com/v1beta1
kind: RestoreSession
metadata:
  name: ss-restore
  namespace: staging
spec:
  repository:
    name: gcs-repo
    namespace: storage
  target:
    ref:
      apiVersion: apps/v1
      kind: StatefulSet
      name: stash-recovered
    volumeMounts:
    - name:  source-data
      mountPath:  /source/data
    rules:
    - paths:
      - /source/data

Here,

spec.repository.name specifies the name of the Repository.
spec.repository.namespace refers to the namespace of the Repository.
spec.target.ref refers to the target workload where the recovered data will be stored.
spec.target.volumeMounts specifies a list of volumes and their mountPath where the data will be restored.
- mountPath must be the same mountPath as the original volume because Stash stores the absolute path of the backed-up files. If you use a different mountPath for the restored volume the backed up files will not be restored into your desired volume.

Let’s create the RestoreSession object we have shown above,

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/stashed/docs/raw/v2023.02.28/docs/guides/managed-backup/dedicated-storage-namespace/examples/restoresession.yaml
restoresession.stash.appscode.com/ss-restore created

Now, wait for the RestoreSession phase to go into the Succeeded state.

Wait for RestoreSession to Succeeded:

Run the following command to watch the RestoreSession phase,

$ kubectl get restoresession -n staging -w

NAME         REPOSITORY   PHASE       DURATION   AGE
ss-restore   gcs-repo     Succeeded   3m6s       4m

So, we can see from the output of the above command that the restore process succeeded.

Verify Restored Data

In this section, we are going to verify that the desired data has been restored successfully.

Get the pods of the stash-recovered StatefulSet,

$ kubectl get pod -n staging
NAME                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
stash-recovered-0   1/1     Running   0          10m
stash-recovered-1   1/1     Running   0          11m
stash-recovered-2   1/1     Running   0          12m

Verify that the backed-up data has been restored in /source/data directory of the stash-recovered pods of a StatefulSet using the following commands,

$ kubectl exec -n staging stash-recovered-0 -- cat /source/data/data.txt
stash-demo-0
$ kubectl exec -n staging stash-recovered-1 -- cat /source/data/data.txt
stash-demo-1
$ kubectl exec -n staging stash-recovered-2 -- cat /source/data/data.txt
stash-demo-2

Cleaning Up

To clean up the resources created by this tutorial, run:

kubectl delete -n prod statefulset stash-demo
kubectl delete -n prod backupconfiguration ss-backup
kubectl delete -n prod pvc --all
kubectl delete -n staging statefulset stash-recovered
kubectl delete -n staging restoresession ss-restore
kubectl delete -n staging pvc --all
kubectl delete -n storage repository gcs-repo
kubectl delete -n storage secret gcs-secret

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