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Back up and restore Harness Self-Managed Enterprise Edition Helm installations

Harness recommends using Velero to back up and restore Helm-based installations of Harness Self-Managed Enterprise Edition.

Install Minio​

  1. Create a MinIO override.

    ### filename minio-ov.yaml
    fullnameOverride: "minio"
    mode: standalone
    ### we require the bucket to be matching the value on velero-cli
    defaultBuckets: "velero"
    persistence:
        size: 200Gi
    ### un-necessary, it can create random rootPassword
    auth:
        rootUser: admin
        rootPassword: "admin123"

  2. Deploy MinIO.

    helm install minio bitnami/minio -f minio-ov.yaml -n velero --create-namespace

Install Velero​

You can install Velero using several methods, but Harness recommends installation using a Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin. CSI is a standard interface that enables container orchestrators, such as Kubernetes, to manage different storage systems in a consistent and modular way. The CSI specification defines a set of APIs that container orchestrators can use to discover and manage storage systems, create and delete volumes, attach and detach volumes from nodes, and perform other storage-related operations. CSI drivers implement these APIs to provide integration with specific storage systems.

If installation with a CSI plugin is not a viable option for your environment, you may use one of the Velero integrations with cloud providers. For more information, go to Providers in the Velero documentation.

note

The following backup solution has also been tested for istio-based environments. It can restore the sidecars when backing up the Kubernetes objects.

To install Velero, do the following:

  1. Create a VolumeSnapshot object, and ensure you are using the Storage class and snapshot with the same CSI driver.

    apiVersion: snapshot.storage.k8s.io/v1
    kind: VolumeSnapshotClass
    metadata:
        name: velero-snapshot-class
        labels:
            velero.io/csi-volumesnapshot-class: "true"
    driver: pd.csi.storage.gke.io
    deletionPolicy: Delete

  2. Install velero using the above minio credentials. Please refer to Velero documentation for detailed instructions.

    1. Create a file credentials-velero. Match the S3 blob user name and password.
    [default]
    aws_access_key_id = admin
    aws_secret_access_key = admin123
    1. Install Velero using the CLI. Use the AWS plugin to store directly to MinIO.
    velero install \
    --provider aws \
    --plugins velero/velero-plugin-for-aws:v1.11.0,velero/velero-plugin-for-csi:v0.7.1 \
    --bucket velero  \
    --secret-file ./credentials-velero  \
    --use-volume-snapshots=true \
    --backup-location-config region=default,s3ForcePathStyle="true",s3Url=http://minio.velero.svc.cluster.local:9000 \
    --snapshot-location-config region="default" \
    --features=EnableCSI

Backup and restore​

Recommendations​

Harness recommends that you perform a full backup of the Harness namespace at least once a week, preferably every 24 hours.

Example workflow​

In this example, the Harness application is deployed in the Harness namespace. Velero and MinIO are deployed in a namespace Velero.

Velero takes two kinds of backups: Backups with Volume (VolumeSnapshots) and Kubernetes resource Backups. For VolumeSnapshots, the CSI supported storage class is required. In this example, The application is deployed in a standard-rwo storage class of GKE, which is driven by pd.csi.storage.gke.io. This driver is used in VolumeSnapshotClass as well. Make sure the VolumeSnapshotClass is labeled with velero.io/csi-volumesnapshot-class: "true" so Velero recognizes it.

To backup with volume, do the following:

  1. Create a backup. The following command is an example of deploying a Harness application in the Harness namespace and taking a backup of the whole namespace.

    velero backup create harness-backup --include-namespaces harness

    After the backup completes, you can see the volumeSnapShotContents were created in harness namespace.

    kubectl get volumesnapshotcontent -n harness

  2. Create a disaster by deleting the harness namespace.

  3. Restore the namespace from a backup.

    velero restore create --from-backup harness-backup

    Confirm if the PVs are bound

  4. Delete old timescaledb endpoints

    kubectl delete endpoints timescaledb-single-chart timescaledb-single-chart-config timescaledb-single-chart-replica -n harness

Troubleshoot​

Using new minio credentials after velero installation​

  • Velero creates a kubernetes secret with the provided credentials.
  • To update the credentials, delete the existing secret from velero namespace. kubectl delete secret cloud-credentials -n velero
  • Run velero installation command after updating credentials file.

Mirror minio data to cloud storage​

  • Minio deployment contains a mirror utility which can be used to mirror local data to cloud buckets.
  • Exec into the minio pod of velero namespace. kubectl exec -it <minio-pod-name> -n velero -- sh
  • Add remote storage bucket entry in minio config. mc alias set s3 <remote-bucket-url> <access-key> <secret-key>
  • Run mirror command. mc mirror local s3

Backup Failed​

  • When you describe a backup and the status reflects Failed state, capture the velero pods logs. kubectl logs deployment/velero -n velero > logs.txt
  • Check the error in logs.txt file and take required actions.
  • Common errors include
    • BackupLocation is unavailable with 403 forbidden status: This indicates that the credentials used are wrong. Update the credentials using above approach.
    • Bucket does not exist: This indicates that the bucket used in velero install command does not exist. Create the required bucket in your desired storage.
    • Waiting for CSI driver to reconcile volumesnapshot: This indicates that csi driver is not able to create volumesnapshotcontent. Please make sure that you csi snapshot-controller is correctly installed.