Chapter 8. Backing Up Satellite Server and Capsule Server

The full backup creates uncompressed archives of MongoDB, PostgreSQL and Pulp database files, and Satellite configuration files. Compression occurs after the archives are created to decrease the time when Satellite services are unavailable.

A full backup requires space to store the following data:

Red Hat Satellite 6.8 uses the satellite-maintain backup command to make backups.

There are three main methods of backing up Satellite Server:

For offline backups:

# satellite-maintain backup offline --help

For online backups:

# satellite-maintain backup online --help

For snapshots backups:

# satellite-maintain backup snapshot --help

When you run the satellite-maintain backup offline command, the following default backup directories are created:

If you want to set a custom directory name, add the --preserve-directory option and add a directory name. The backup is then stored in the directory you provide in the command line. If you use the --preserve-directory option, no data is removed if the backup fails.

Note that if you use a local PgSQL database, the postgres user requires write access to the backup directory.

You can use both online and offline methods to back up remote databases, but if you use offline methods, such as snapshot, the satellite-maintain backup command performs a database dump.

You can perform an offline backup that excludes the contents of the Pulp directory. The backup without Pulp content is useful for debugging purposes and is only intended to provide access to configuration files without backing up the Pulp database. You cannot restore from a directory that does not contain Pulp content.

Use this procedure to perform an offline backup of any changes since a previous backup.

To perform incremental backups, you must perform a full backup as a reference to create the first incremental backup of a sequence. Keep the most recent full backup and a complete sequence of incremental backups to restore from.

The following script performs a full backup on a Sunday followed by incremental backups for each of the following days. A new subdirectory is created for each day that an incremental backup is performed. The script requires a daily cron job.

#!/bin/bash -e
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DESTINATION=/var/backup_directory
if [[ $(date +%w) == 0 ]]; then
  satellite-maintain backup offline --assumeyes $DESTINATION
else
  LAST=$(ls -td -- $DESTINATION/*/ | head -n 1)
  satellite-maintain backup offline --assumeyes --incremental "$LAST" $DESTINATION
fi
exit 0

Note that the satellite-maintain backup command requires /sbin and /usr/sbin directories to be in PATH and the --assumeyes option is used to skip the confirmation prompt.

Perform an online backup only for debugging purposes.

When performing an online backup, if there are procedures affecting the Pulp database, the Pulp part of the backup procedure repeats until it is no longer being altered. Because the backup of the Pulp database is the most time consuming part of backing up Satellite, if you make a change that alters the Pulp database during this time, the backup procedure keeps restarting.

For production environments, use the snapshot method. For more information, see Section 8.7, “Performing a Snapshot Backup”. If you want to use the online backup method in production, proceed with caution and ensure that no modifications occur during the backup.

You can perform a snapshot backup that uses Logical Volume Manager (LVM) snapshots of the Pulp, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL directories. Creating a backup from LVM snapshots mitigates the risk of an inconsistent backup.

The snapshot backup method is faster than a full offline backup and therefore reduces Satellite downtime.

To view the usage statement, enter the following command:

satellite-maintain backup snapshot -h

The satellite-maintain backup snapshot command creates snapshots when the services are active, and stops all services which can impact the backup. This makes the maintenance window shorter. After the successful snapshot, all services are restarted and LVM snapshots are removed.

A backup using the satellite-maintain backup command proceeds in a sequence of steps. To skip part of the backup add the --whitelist option to the command and add the step label that you want to omit.