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CLI v1 Backup / Restore

Why performing bosh director backup and restores ?

If using bosh-init to deploy your bosh-director, it is useful to backup the deployment state file containing associated Iaas information (IP, floating IP, persistent disk volume id). This would enable recovery of a lost bosh director VM from the persistent disk still present in the Iaas. See recovering state.

Performing regular backup of the bosh director is essential to be able to operate your bosh deployments (CF, services ...) up despite a loss the the bosh director persistent disk, or an operator error such as the deletion by mistake of the director deployment. See related testimony of such not fun experience

Bosh provides built-in commands to export the content of the director database and restore it on a fresh empty director deployment. The back up however does not include the data than can be recovered from artifact repositories, namely bosh stemcells and releases. The latter need to be re uploaded manually.

Backup your bosh director

Target the bosh director deployment that you need to backup:

bosh deployment your_bosh_director_manifest

Make a backup of your bosh instance :

bosh backup

This command will generate a .tar.gz file that contains a dump of director's database

Restore the backup following an outage

We assume that your bosh director deployment was deleted so you need to restore it.

The first step is to deploy a new fresh empty bosh director deployment.

The second step is to restore the content of the bosh director db

  • Connect to your bosh instance (using bosh target https://your_bosh_ip).
  • Use the bosh restore command : bosh restore yourBackupFile.tar.gz

The third step is to manually re-upload the releases and stemcells binaries.

  • List the expected stemcells and releases

bosh stemcells bosh releases

Then upload stemcells/releases from your repositories such as bosh.io, using the --fix option so bosh will fix them in the db (fixing the missing blobs). Without the --fix option, bosh would complain about duplicate stemcells/releases with same name.

bosh upload stemcell https://stemcells_url --fix bosh upload releases https://release_url --fix

Following these restoration steps, the bosh director is now able to manage your previous deployments.

bosh cloudcheck

bosh instances --ps

You can now safely update your deployments using the usual deploy command.

bosh deploy