Back up Block Storage service disks¶

While you can use the LVM snapshot to create snapshots, you can also use it to back up your volumes. By using LVM snapshot, you reduce the size of the backup; only existing data is backed up instead of the entire volume.

To back up a volume, you must create a snapshot of it. An LVM snapshot is the exact copy of a logical volume, which contains data in a frozen state. This prevents data corruption because data cannot be manipulated during the volume creation process. Remember that the volumes created through an openstack volume create command exist in an LVM logical volume.

You must also make sure that the operating system is not using the volume and that all data has been flushed on the guest file systems. This usually means that those file systems have to be unmounted during the snapshot creation. They can be mounted again as soon as the logical volume snapshot has been created.

Before you create the snapshot you must have enough space to save it. As a precaution, you should have at least twice as much space as the potential snapshot size. If insufficient space is available, the snapshot might become corrupted.

For this example assume that a 100 GB volume named volume-00000001 was created for an instance while only 4 GB are used. This example uses these commands to back up only those 4 GB:

• lvm2 command. Directly manipulates the volumes.
• kpartx command. Discovers the partition table created inside the instance.
• tar command. Creates a minimum-sized backup.
• sha1sum command. Calculates the backup checksum to check its consistency.

You can apply this process to volumes of any size.

To back up Block Storage service disks

1. Create a snapshot of a used volume

   • Use this command to list all volumes

     # lvdisplay
     

   • Create the snapshot; you can do this while the volume is attached to an instance:

     # lvcreate --size 10G --snapshot --name volume-00000001-snapshot \
       /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001
     

     Use the --snapshot configuration option to tell LVM that you want a snapshot of an already existing volume. The command includes the size of the space reserved for the snapshot volume, the name of the snapshot, and the path of an already existing volume. Generally, this path is /dev/cinder-volumes/VOLUME_NAME.

     The size does not have to be the same as the volume of the snapshot. The --size parameter defines the space that LVM reserves for the snapshot volume. As a precaution, the size should be the same as that of the original volume, even if the whole space is not currently used by the snapshot.

   • Run the lvdisplay command again to verify the snapshot:

     --- Logical volume ---
     LV Name                /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001
     VG Name                cinder-volumes
     LV UUID                gI8hta-p21U-IW2q-hRN1-nTzN-UC2G-dKbdKr
     LV Write Access        read/write
     LV snapshot status     source of
                            /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000026-snap [active]
     LV Status              available
     # open                 1
     LV Size                15,00 GiB
     Current LE             3840
     Segments               1
     Allocation             inherit
     Read ahead sectors     auto
     - currently set to     256
     Block device           251:13
     
     --- Logical volume ---
     LV Name                /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001-snap
     VG Name                cinder-volumes
     LV UUID                HlW3Ep-g5I8-KGQb-IRvi-IRYU-lIKe-wE9zYr
     LV Write Access        read/write
     LV snapshot status     active destination for /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000026
     LV Status              available
     # open                 0
     LV Size                15,00 GiB
     Current LE             3840
     COW-table size         10,00 GiB
     COW-table LE           2560
     Allocated to snapshot  0,00%
     Snapshot chunk size    4,00 KiB
     Segments               1
     Allocation             inherit
     Read ahead sectors     auto
     - currently set to     256
     Block device           251:14
     

2. Partition table discovery

   • To exploit the snapshot with the tar command, mount your partition on the Block Storage service server.

     The kpartx utility discovers and maps table partitions. You can use it to view partitions that are created inside the instance. Without using the partitions created inside instances, you cannot see its content and create efficient backups.

     # kpartx -av /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001-snapshot
     

     Note

     On a Debian-based distribution, you can use the apt-get install kpartx command to install kpartx.

     If the tools successfully find and map the partition table, no errors are returned.

   • To check the partition table map, run this command:

     $ ls /dev/mapper/nova*
     

     You can see the cinder--volumes-volume--00000001--snapshot1 partition.

     If you created more than one partition on that volume, you see several partitions; for example: cinder--volumes-volume--00000001--snapshot2, cinder--volumes-volume--00000001--snapshot3, and so on.

   • Mount your partition

     # mount /dev/mapper/cinder--volumes-volume--volume--00000001--snapshot1 /mnt
     

     If the partition mounts successfully, no errors are returned.

     You can directly access the data inside the instance. If a message prompts you for a partition or you cannot mount it, determine whether enough space was allocated for the snapshot or the kpartx command failed to discover the partition table.

     Allocate more space to the snapshot and try the process again.

3. Use the tar command to create archives

   Create a backup of the volume:

   $ tar --exclude="lost+found" --exclude="some/data/to/exclude" -czf \
     volume-00000001.tar.gz -C /mnt/ /backup/destination
   

   This command creates a tar.gz file that contains the data, and data only. This ensures that you do not waste space by backing up empty sectors.

4. Checksum calculation

   You should always have the checksum for your backup files. When you transfer the same file over the network, you can run a checksum calculation to ensure that your file was not corrupted during its transfer. The checksum is a unique ID for a file. If the checksums are different, the file is corrupted.

   Run this command to run a checksum for your file and save the result to a file:

   $ sha1sum volume-00000001.tar.gz > volume-00000001.checksum
   

   Note

   Use the sha1sum command carefully because the time it takes to complete the calculation is directly proportional to the size of the file.

   Depending on your CPU, the process might take a long time for files larger than around 4 to 6 GB.

5. After work cleaning

   Now that you have an efficient and consistent backup, use this command to clean up the file system:

   • Unmount the volume.

     $ umount /mnt
     

   • Delete the partition table.

     $ kpartx -dv /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001-snapshot
     

   • Remove the snapshot.

     $ lvremove -f /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001-snapshot
     

   Repeat these steps for all your volumes.

6. Automate your backups

   Because more and more volumes might be allocated to your Block Storage service, you might want to automate your backups. The SCR_5005_V01_NUAC-OPENSTACK-EBS-volumes-backup.sh script assists you with this task. The script performs the operations from the previous example, but also provides a mail report and runs the backup based on the backups_retention_days setting.

   Launch this script from the server that runs the Block Storage service.

   This example shows a mail report:

   Backup Start Time - 07/10 at 01:00:01
   Current retention - 7 days
   
   The backup volume is mounted. Proceed...
   Removing old backups...  : /BACKUPS/EBS-VOL/volume-00000019/volume-00000019_28_09_2011.tar.gz
        /BACKUPS/EBS-VOL/volume-00000019 - 0 h 1 m and 21 seconds. Size - 3,5G
   
   The backup volume is mounted. Proceed...
   Removing old backups...  : /BACKUPS/EBS-VOL/volume-0000001a/volume-0000001a_28_09_2011.tar.gz
        /BACKUPS/EBS-VOL/volume-0000001a - 0 h 4 m and 15 seconds. Size - 6,9G
   ---------------------------------------
   Total backups size - 267G - Used space : 35%
   Total execution time - 1 h 75 m and 35 seconds
   

   The script also enables you to SSH to your instances and run a mysqldump command into them. To make this work, enable the connection to the Compute project keys. If you do not want to run the mysqldump command, you can add enable_mysql_dump=0 to the script to turn off this functionality.