Backup Helper

The Backup Helper aims to help you make and restore backups of your project files and PostgreSQL database. Also, you can upload and download backup files to Google Cloud Storage.

A list of commands that you can run with this container:

• backup_postgres: make a backup of PostgreSQL database(s)
• backup_files: make a backup of files and directories
• backup_ls: list local backup files
• backup_clean: remove local backup files
• restore_postgres: restore a backup of a PostgreSQL database
• restore_files: restore a backup of files and directories
• gcs_upload: upload backup files to Google Cloud Storage
• gcs_download: download a backup file from Google Cloud Storage
• gcs_ls: list backup files present in Google Cloud Storage

In the rest of this README, you can find more information about how to run and configure these commands.

Docker image

The Docker image of the Backup Helper is available on Docker Hub:

docker pull askanna/backup-helper

Configuration

Via environment variables you can configure the Backup Helper.

Environment variable	Required	Default	Description
BACKUP_DIR	No	/backups	The path where the backups will be saved
BACKUP_FILE_PREFIX	No	backup	An optional prefix for the backup filename
BACKUP_KEEP_DAYS	No	NONE	The number of days you want to keep local backup files. The Backup Helper only removes local backup files when you run backup_clean.   NONE: remove all local backups 0: keep backups that are modified less than 24 hours ago 1: keep backups that are modified less than 48 hours ago n: keep backups that are modified less than (n + 1) * 24 hours ago
BACKUP_ZIP_FILES	No	true	true / false; if set to true, file compression with gzip will be applied. To speed up the backup of files, you can set BACKUP_ZIP_FILES to false.

PostgreSQL configuration

Environment variable	Required	Default	Description
POSTGRES_HOST	No	localhost	The PostgreSQL database server host
POSTGRES_PORT	No	5432	The PostgreSQL database server port
POSTGRES_DB	No		The database to backup. If this variable is not set, the POSTGRES_USER name is used (ref. documentation).
POSTGRES_DATABASES	No		The databases to backup. If both POSTGRES_DATABASES and POSTGRES_DB are provided, the POSTGRES_DATABASES variable will be used.   Format: database_1 database_2 database_3 (without quotation marks)
POSTGRES_USER	No		The PostgreSQL database user
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	No		The PostgreSQL database password

File configuration

Environment variable	Required	Default	Description
BACKUP_SOURCE	No	/data	The path of the directory with the files to backup
BACKUP_TARGET	No	${BACKUP_SOURCE}	The path of the directory where files should be restored to

Google Cloud Storage configuration

Environment variable	Required	Default	Description
GCS_BUCKET	No		The Google Cloud Storage Bucket you want to upload the backup files to or download them from   This variable is required if you want to use the Backup Helper to upload files to or download from Google Cloud Storage.
GCS_KEY_FILE_PATH	No	/keys/gcs-key.json	The path where the GCS service account key file will be mounted.   This variable is required if you want to use the Backup Helper to upload files to or download from Google Cloud Storage.

GCS service account key file

To use the Google Cloud Storage features, you need to have a Google service account or create a new service account. To authenticate, you need to have the associated private JSON key of the service account or create a new service account JSON key.

Daily backup

There is a backup, upload and clean script in this image's directory /etc/periodic/daily. This backup script run the following commands:

• gcs_upload
• backup_clean
• backup_postgres
• backup_files
• gcs_upload

When you start the image, the daily backup is not scheduled because the cron daemon is not started by default. When you run the image with the command crond -f it will start the cron daemon and schedule the daily backup. See also 'How we use it'.

How we use it

We use the Backup Helper for the AskAnna project that we run as a Docker Stack. In our Docker Compose file we have a service named backup-helper:

backup_helper:
  image: askanna/backup-helper
  command: crond -f
  volumes:
    - backup_volume:/backups
    - storage_volume:/data
    - ../gcs-key.json:/keys/gcs-key.json:ro
  env_file:
    - ./postgres.env
  environment:
      GCS_BUCKET: <Google Cloud Storage Bucket name>

With the Backup Helper available as a service in the Docker Stack, we can perform backup tasks. Depending on the backup task, we run one or multiple of the commands below.

If you don't want to schedule a daily backup, remove the line command: crond -f.

Make backup

Backup PostgreSQL

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper backup_postgres

Backup files

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper backup_files

List backups

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper backup_ls

Restore backup

Restore PostgreSQL

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper restore_postgres <backup file>

Restore files

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper restore_files <backup file>

Clean backups

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper backup_clean

Google Cloud Storage

Upload backup

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper gcs_upload

Download backup

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper gcs_download <backup file>

List backups on GCS

docker-compose run --rm backup_helper gcs_ls

Credits

The Backup Helper is inspired by cookiecutter/cookiecutter-django and diogopms/postgres-gcs-backup.