Scheduling backups in a remote server

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Warning: Apigee Hybrid versions before 1.12.4 have a known issue affecting backups that use HYBRID or GCP Cloud Providers. Please check the Cleanup leftover snapshots to check whether your setup is affected and for steps needed for resolution.

This page describes how to schedule backups for Cassandra without the Cloud Storage. In this method, backups are stored on a remote server specified by you instead of a Cloud Storage bucket. Apigee uses SSH to communicate with the remote server.

You must schedule the backups as cron jobs. Once a backup schedule has been applied to your hybrid cluster, a Kubernetes backup job is periodically executed according to the schedule in the runtime plane. The job triggers a backup script on each Cassandra node in your hybrid cluster that collects all the data on the node, creates an archive (compressed) file of the data, and sends the archive to the server specified in your overrides.yaml file.

Note:

• You must ensure there is enough space on the file system for the backups, and adjust the frequency of the backups to avoid unnecessarily filling the allotted storage space. Apigee does not dictate a retention policy for the backup files. You may want to create a retention policy for files appropriate to your installation.
• Applying backup configuration on the existing cluster will rolling restart Cassandra pods.

The following steps include common examples for completing specific tasks, like creating an SSH key pair. Use the methods that are appropriate to your installation.

The procedure has the following parts:

• Set up the server and SSH
• Set the schedule and destination for backup

Set up the server and SSH

1. Select a Backup Server: Choose a Linux or Unix server with adequate storage for your backups and ensure it can be accessed via SSH from your Apigee hybrid runtime plane.
2. Configure the SSH Server: Either install an SSH server or confirm that an existing one is secure.
Caution: For security purposes, make sure your SSH server is up to date.
3. Create an SSH Key Pair: Generate an SSH key pair without a passphrase:For example:

   ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C [e-mail]
     Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/exampleuser/.ssh/id_rsa): $APIGEE_HOME/hybrid-files/certs/ssh_key
     Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
     Enter same passphrase again:
     Your identification has been saved in ssh_key
     Your public key has been saved in ssh_key.pub
     The key fingerprint is:
     SHA256:DWKo334XMZcZYLOLrd/8HNpjTERPJJ0mc11UYmrPvSA [e-mail]
     The key's randomart image is:
     +---[RSA 4096]----+
     |          +.  ++X|
     |     .   . o.=.*+|
     |    . o . . o==o |
     |   . . . =oo+o...|
     |  .     S +E oo .|
     |   . .   .. . o .|
     |    . . .  . o.. |
     |     .  ...o ++. |
     |      .. .. +o+. |
     +----[SHA256]-----+

   Where: [e-mail] is a string. Any string that follows -C in the ssh-keygen command becomes a comment included in the newly created ssh key. The input string can be any string. When you use an account name in the form of [e-mail], you can quickly identify which account goes with the key.

   The command will generate two SSH key files, A private key file (for example `ssh_key.rsa`) and a public key file (for example, `ssh_key.pub`).

   Save the private key to a location that your runtime plane can access.

4. Add a User Account: On the backup server, create a user named apigee with a home directory under /home/apigee. Make sure the new apigee user has a home directory under /home.
5. Set Up the .ssh Directory: On the backup server, create a .ssh directory in /home/apigee/.ssh. For example:

   cd /home/apigee
         mkdir .ssh
         cd .ssh
         vi authorized_keys

6. Install the Public Key: Place the public key into the authorized_keys file within the /home/apigee/ directory. The backup directory can be any directory as long as the apigee user has access to it.Paste the contents of the ssh public key file into the file.
7. Verify SSH Access: Test the connection from your local machine or a cluster node:

ssh -i PATH_TO_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE apigee@BACKUP_SERVER_IP

Note: Make sure that you are able to access the remote server without being prompted for a password or a passphrase. If you get asked for a passphrase, please regenerate the ssh key pair without specifying a passphrase. In case you get prompted for a password, please double-check your ssh configuration on your remote server, since it is most likely not set up correctly.

Set the schedule and destination for backup

You set the schedule and destination for backups in your overrides.yaml file.

1. Add the following parameters to your overrides.yaml file:

   Parameters

   cassandra:
     backup:
       enabled: true
       keyFile: "PATH_TO_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE"
       server: "BACKUP_SERVER_IP"
       storageDirectory: "/home/apigee/BACKUP_DIRECTORY"
       cloudProvider: "HYBRID" # required verbatim "HYBRID" (all caps)
       schedule: "SCHEDULE"

   Example

   cassandra:
     backup:
       enabled: true
       keyFile: "private.key" # path relative to apigee-datastore path
       server: "34.56.78.90"
       storageDirectory: "/home/apigee/cassbackup"
       cloudProvider: "HYBRID"
       schedule: "0 2 * * *"

   Where:

   Property	Description
   backup:enabled	Backup is disabled by default. You must set this property to true.
   backup:keyFile	PATH_TO_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE The path on your local file system to the SSH private key file (named ssh_key in the step where you created the SSH key pair). This path must be relative to the apigee-datastore chart directory.
   backup:server	BACKUP_SERVER_IP The IP address of your backup server.
   backup:storageDirectory	BACKUP_DIRECTORY The name of the backup directory on your backup server. This must be a directory within home/apigee (the backup directory is named cassandra_backup in the step where you created the backup directory).
   backup:cloudProvider	HYBRID For a remote server backup, set the property to HYBRID.
   backup:schedule	SCHEDULE The time when the backup starts, specified in standard crontab syntax. Times are in the local time zone of the Kubernetes cluster. Default: 0 2 * * * Note: Avoid scheduling a backup that starts a short time after you apply the backup configuration to your cluster. When you apply the backup configuration, Kubernetes recreates the Cassandra nodes. If the backup starts before the nodes restart, the first backup will fail and the subsequent backups will pass.

2. Apply the backup configuration to the storage scope of your cluster:

   helm upgrade datastore apigee-datastore/ \
     --install \
     --namespace APIGEE_NAMESPACE \
     --atomic \
     -f OVERRIDES_FILE.yaml
   

   Where OVERRIDES_FILE is the path to the overrides file you just edited.

3. Verify the backup job. For example:

   kubectl get cronjob -n APIGEE_NAMESPACE

   NAME                      SCHEDULE     SUSPEND   ACTIVE   LAST SCHEDULE   AGE
   apigee-cassandra-backup   33 * * * *   False     0        <none>          94s

Launch a manual backup

Backup jobs are triggered automatically according to the cron schedule set in cassandra.backup.schedule in your overrides.yaml file. However, you can also initiate a backup job manually if needed using the following command:

kubectl create job -n APIGEE_NAMESPACE --from=cronjob/apigee-cassandra-backup MANUAL_BACKUP_JOB_NAME

Where MANUAL_BACKUP_JOB_NAME is the name of a manual backup job to be be created.

Troubleshooting

1. Test the connection from a Cassandra pod. You need to make sure that your Cassandra pods can connect to your backup server using SSH:
   1. Log into the shell of your Cassandra pod. For example:

      kubectl exec -it -n APIGEE_NAMESPACE APIGEE_CASSANDRA_POD -- /bin/bash

      Where APIGEE_CASSANDRA_POD is the name of a Cassandra pod. Change this to the name of the pod you want to connect from.

   2. Connect by SSH to your backup server, using the private SSH key mounted the Cassandra pod and server IP address:

      ssh -i /var/secrets/keys/key apigee@BACKUP_SERVER_IP

      Note: You may see a warning at this point saying your server's fingerprint is unrecognized and asks if you would like to continue. You can continue at that prompt and verify the SSH configuration.
2. If you have problems accessing your remote server from the Cassandra pod, please check your ssh configuration on the remote server again and also make sure that upgrading the datastore was successful.
3. You can check if Cassandra uses the correct private key by running the following command while you are logged in to your Cassandra pod, and compare the output with the private key you created:

   cat /var/secrets/keys/key