Backup and restore#

Nokia Event-Driven Automation (EDA) clusters can be backed up and restored, include the following features:

• A backup can be performed at any time without stopping the application.
• Backups are atomic and contain the last golden set of working configuration. The system waits until an in-progress transaction is completed before proceeding with a backup.
• An administrator may restore into a currently-running or populated cluster, resulting in the cluster reverting back to the state provided in the backup.
• An administrator can restore into a clean/freshly installed cluster.

Backups#

In Nokia EDA, a backup is simply the copy of all Git repositories in use at the time of the backup and an EngineConfig resource file from the source that can be optionally restored.

The edactl platform backup command is used to create a backup. At a high-level, this command does the following:

• Creates a tarball of all repositories, including the following:
• Backup (the set of resources used in the cluster)
• Apps (the set of installed applications in the cluster)
• User storage (user-generated content including dashboards)
• Certificates and secrets
• Identity (the set of users, groups, and roles)
• Adds to this tarball the current EngineConfig resource file.
• Streams these files to the client performing the backup over gRPC.

The tarball created is created in the format eda-backup-<cluster-member-name>-<date-and-time>.tgz in the current directory. You can optionally provide a name for the tarball and provide an alternate destination by providing the name and the destination's path in the command.

Extracting the backup file#

An administrator can use the edactl platform backup extract --filename <filepath> <path> command to extract the contents of a backup tar file, where:

• <filepath> is the path to the directory of the backup tar file (in .tar.gz format). For example, /home/user/backup.tar.gz
• <path> is the path to the directory where you want to extract the backup files. For example, /home/user/extracted/. The directory is recursively created if it does not exist.

This command extracts the specified backup tar file into the specified directory. This command extracts any git packs, so you can easily investigate the files within them.

Displaying the backup summary#

An administrator can use edactl platform backup summary --filename <filepath> command to display the summary for the backup tar file, where <filepath> is the path of the backup tar file (in .tar.gz format), for example, /home/dev/backup.tar.gz.

This command takes the specified backup file, and prints the following information:

• The base namespace used in the backup.
• The EDA version used in the backup.
• The list of namespaces used in the backup.
• The list of installed apps in the backup.
• The per-GVK count of resources in the backup.
• The size of each repository in the backup.

The summary also lists the resources of the credentials/security repository. For example:

repositories:
# other repos
- name: security
  size: "127590"
  resources:
    - namespace: _base_ # taken from the repo dir path
      gvks:
        - core.eda.nokia.com/v1/NodeSecurityProfile:
          - insecure
          - managed-tls
        - core.eda.nokia.com/v1/License:
          - eda-non-prod-license
        - trust.cert-manager.io/v1alpha1/Bundle:
          - eda-api-trust-bundle
        - v1/Secret:
        - v1/ConfigMap:

Restore process#

The edactl platform restore command restores a backup. When you initiate a restore operation, the ConfigEngine on the destination cluster performs the following tasks:

• Receives the restore request via gRPC. The request contains the complete tarball generated via a backup.
• Unpacks the backup, overwriting all content as it goes.
• Pushes backed up repositories and files to any server identified in the EngineConfig.
• Exits, relying on Kubernetes to restart.
• Starts again as if it had started clean from the repositories.

By default, all repositories are backed up, but you can use the following options to exclude some repositories:

• --exclude-identity-git-repo: excludes the identity repository

• --exclude-security-git-repo: excludes the security repository

  Excluding the security repository prevents you from restoring an old security repository with expired certificates.

Creating backups #

An administrator can create a backup using the edactl platform backup command.

Restoring backups #

• The destination cluster must be running the same or newer version as the cluster from where the backup was created.
• You must have rights and permissions on the cluster in which the backup is to be restored.

Procedure#