cbbackupmgr
cbbackupmgr is a tool for managing the backup and restore of Couchbase-Server data.
Understanding cbbackupmgr
The cbbackupmgr tool backs up and restores data, scripts, configurations, and more.
It allows large data sets to be managed with extremely high performance.
Use of AWS S3 storage is supported.
Only Full Administrators can use cbbackupmgr;
which is available for both Couchbase Server Enterprise Edition and Couchbase Server Community Edition.
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In Couchbase Enterprise Server 7.2 and later, |
Planning for Disaster Recovery
Backup and restore capabilities are critical to an overall Disaster Recovery Plan, and ensuring thereby business continuity.
Administrators are therefore recommended to define plans for both Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and make use of cbbackupmgr correspondingly.
Backup Repositories
All backup is stored in and recovered from a Backup Repository. In turn, a Backup Repository is stored in a Backup Archive on the filesystem. Each backup job in the Backup Repository stores its backup in 2 ways:
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You can store all bucket data in a small, secondary database.
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You can store all bucket creation scripts and configuration files on the filesystem, as files.
What’s Backed Up
By default, backups include your database’s data and metadata.
You can change what the tool backs up and restores by using arguments to the cbbackupmgr config command.
For example, if you only want to back up your cluster’s metadata, use the --disable-data command line flag when configuring your backup repository.
You may to choose to use this flag if you want to transfer settings to a new database cluster.
When you use this flag, cbbackupmgr backs up just the following:
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analytic collections and indexes for local links and synonyms
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bucket configuration
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eventing functions
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full-text Search indexes and aliases
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GSI indexes
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Query SQL++ UDFs
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scopes and collections definitions (Couchbase Server version 7.6 and later)
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views
cbbackupmgr does not back up query function libraries such as user-created JavaScript libraries.
You must back up these libraries separately.
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Another useful flag is --enable-users which backs up users and user groups. Users and groups are not backed up by default. This option is useful for preventing the loss of users and groups in case of disaster.
| Backups that include users contain the user’s hashed passwords. |
Other flags let you exclude specific metadata, or select a subset of data to back up.
See cbbackupmgr config for a list of the arguments you can use to control what cbbackupmgr backs up.
You can also use command line flags to control how the cbbackupmgr restore command restores data.
For example, use --overwrite-users to have cbbackupmgr overwrite existing users and groups in the database if the backup contains a matching user or group.
By default, cbbackupmgr does not overwrite existing users in the database.
Instead, it restores just the users in the backup that do not exist in database.
See cbbackupmgr restore for a list of the arguments you can use to control what cbbackupmgr restores.
Tool Locations
When installed as part of the Couchbase Server install, cbbackupmgr tool is stored with all other tools in the following per platform locations:
| Operating system | Directory locations |
|---|---|
Linux |
/opt/couchbase/bin/cbbackupmgr |
Windows |
C:\Program Files\Couchbase\Server\bin\cbbackupmgr Assumes default installation location |
Mac OS X |
/Applications/Couchbase Server.app/Contents/Resources/couchbase-core/bin/cbbackupmgr |
How the Backup and Restore Tool Works
By default, the cbbackupmgr tool performs incremental backups to back up only the new data.
However, on a new cluster and for the first time, this tool generates a full backup.
Each of the subsequent, incremental backups take a fraction of the time taken by the full backup.
Archive Repository
The backup archive is a directory that contains a set of backup repositories as well as logs for the backup client. The backup directory should be modified only by the backup client, and any modifications that are not done by that client might result in a corruption of backup data.
Only 1 backup client can access the backup archive at 1 time. If multiple instances of the backup client are running on the same archive at the same time, this might result in corruption. To prevent such corruption instances, you may be required to create multiple backup archives depending on your use case.
Version Compatibility
For 7.2 and later versions, you can use cbbackupmgr to back up data either from a cluster running its own version, or from a cluster running a prior, compatible version.
You can also use it to restore data to any of these versions from backups created on any of them.
The following table lists the compatible cluster-versions for each version of cbbackupmgr.
Unless otherwise specified, backup and restore apply both to local and to cloud data.
cbbackupmgr version |
8.0 |
7.6 |
7.2 |
8.0 |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
7.6 |
✓ |
✓ |
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7.2 |
✓ |
Restoring metadata and users
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When restoring metadata to a newer Server version, if the feature that the metadata applies to no longer exists in the newer Server version, then the metadata may not be restorable.
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If the user roles no longer exist in the version that you want to restore to, then an error is logged for the target user.
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In general, if you can upgrade to the new version, then you should be able to restore the users. If you cannot upgrade directly, then restoring users may cause errors. For example, if some of the user roles no longer exist in the newer Server version.