Couple of Questions

[Prashant]

Hi ALL,

I have couple of questions and I would like to know:

1. Has Full Only Backup Strategy been implemented or not ? (The manual
says NO)

2. Where & How to configure the following parameters?

rotate_method
rotate_day_of_week
max_snapshots_per_group
backup_skip_fatal
rotate_snapshot_no
max_snapshot_groups
max_snapshots
maintain_materialized_copy

Is this the following correct way to do it?

./xbm backup add "My-FQHN" "My-Backup-Name" "My-strategy_code"
rotate_method=DAY_OF_WEEK rotate_day_of_week=5
max_snapshots_per_group=10 backup_skip_fatal=1 rotate_snapshot_no=10
max_snapshot_groups=3 max_snapshots=10 maintain_materialized_copy=1
"my-cron-expression" "My-Backup-Volume" /path/to/mysql/data my-
username "my-secure-pw"

3. Is it possible to compress the resulting output directory? The
reason for this is my data directory is huge and snapshots really
occupy storage.

Thanks & Regards
Prashant

[Lachlan Mulcahy]

Hi Prashant,

On 09/01/2012, at 10:22 PM, Prashant wrote:

> Hi ALL,
>
> I have couple of questions and I would like to know:
>
> 1. Has Full Only Backup Strategy been implemented or not ? (The manual
> says NO)

No, it has not, though it is not too far off.

> 2. Where & How to configure the following parameters?
>
> rotate_method
> rotate_day_of_week
> max_snapshots_per_group
> backup_skip_fatal
> rotate_snapshot_no
> max_snapshot_groups
> max_snapshots
> maintain_materialized_copy
>
> Is this the following correct way to do it?
>
> ./xbm backup add "My-FQHN" "My-Backup-Name" "My-strategy_code"
> rotate_method=DAY_OF_WEEK rotate_day_of_week=5
> max_snapshots_per_group=10 backup_skip_fatal=1 rotate_snapshot_no=10
> max_snapshot_groups=3 max_snapshots=10 maintain_materialized_copy=1
> "my-cron-expression" "My-Backup-Volume" /path/to/mysql/data my-
> username "my-secure-pw"

This is incorrect.

xbm backup add only accepts a fixed set of the parameters. It is the minimum settings required to create a Scheduled Backup Task with some reasonably sane defaults.

If you wish to edit any of the parameters of the backup task, you should use "xbm backup edit ...." -- the command-line tool will give you some helpful output by simply giving that command without any parameters:

eg.

shell> xbm backup edit

XtraBackup Manager v0.8 - Copyright 2011-2012 Marin Software

Error: Hostname and backup name of the backup to edit must be given along with parameter and value.

Parameters:

name - The name of the Scheduled Backup task
cron_expression - The cron expression for when the backup should be run
backup_user - The username that XtraBackup Manager will attempt to SSH to the remote host with
datadir_path - The datadir path for MySQL on the remote host
mysql_user - The MySQL username for innobackupex to use for communicating with MySQL
mysql_password - The MySQL password for the above
lock_tables - Whether FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK should be used for MyISAM consistency (Y/N)
active - Whether this Scheduled Backup task is activated and should run (Y/N)
throttle - How many MB/sec to throttle this backup to (0 to disable throttling)

Backup Strategy Parameters:

FULLONLY:
max_snapshots - The maximum number of full backup snapshots to maintain on disk.
ROTATING:
rotate_method - Whether to rotate to a new snapshot group based on DAY_OF_WEEK or AFTER_SNAPSHOT_COUNT.
rotate_day_of_week - Only relevant to DAY_OF_WEEK. Comma-separated list of days to rotate groups on. 0=Sun...6=Sat
max_snapshots_per_group - Maximum number of snapshots that may be taken in any snapshot group.
backup_skip_fatal - If a backup exceeds the max per group, consider skipping that backup fatal and alert.
rotate_snapshot_no - Only relevant to AFTER_SNAPSHOT_COUNT. Rotate groups after this many snapshots.
max_snapshot_groups - Maximum number of snapshot groups to maintain.
maintain_materialized_copy Keep a fully materialized copy of the latest backup for faster restores.
CONTINC:
max_snapshots - The maximum number of backup snapshots to maintain in total (FULL and INCREMENTAL)
maintain_materialized_copy - Keep a fully materialized copy of the latest backup for faster restores.

Example:

xbm backup edit db01.mydomain.com "Daily Backup" cron_expression "0 18 * * *"

> 3. Is it possible to compress the resulting output directory? The
> reason for this is my data directory is huge and snapshots really
> occupy storage.

Right now there is no support to compress snapshots in XtraBackup Manager itself.

For this reason, I actually like to use Nexenta Core, which is a free OS based on the OpenSolaris kernel, with Debian-style user space -- the benefit is that you can use ZFS filesystem which has filesystem level compression. This way everything is automatically compressed and you don't have to worry about managing tarballs, etc.

Do you have the freedom to choose the OS you run for your backup platform, or are you locked in to CentOS?

Lachlan

[Prashant N]

I can switch to Nexenta, but 95% of servers are CentOS and I have good
with CentOS

Let me know how can we proceed further
--
Thanks & Regards
Prashant N

[Lachlan Mulcahy]

Hi Prashant,

On 10/01/2012, at 10:31 PM, Prashant N wrote:

> I can switch to Nexenta, but 95% of servers are CentOS and I have good
> with CentOS
>
> Let me know how can we proceed further

I don't have any immediate plans to add compression support. It is possible that it will come in the future, but for now I'm focused on the basic functionality and stabilisation for a 1.0 release.

Compression may be added in a future in a point release after 1.0

So for now if you desperately need compression and you are game enough to try, I'd suggest considering Nexenta. There are other OSes that have ZFS like Solaris 11 and FreeBSD, however, I myself test and run on Nexenta, so it's a good bet that things will always get fixed fastest on that platform :)

Best Regards,
Lachlan