How to back up with Restic to Exoscale Object Storage
Restic
Overview
Restic is a simple and efficient backup program you can use to easily back up your data to an Exoscale Simple Object Storage bucket. Restic is available for all official Exoscale Templates from Linux, Windows to BSD.
Benefits Include:
- One bucket for multiple instances
- Windows VSS Support
- One binary without any dependencies
However, Restic comes with some limitations: - No bare-metal restore is possible - No central management is possible - No scheduler is included
Provider Details
Setup
- Create an S3 Bucket on Exoscale. Restic can use Exoscale SOS as backend to store your backups from multiple instances. The SOS Quick Start Guide gives you more details for using the aws s3 cli or the Exoscale Portal to create a bucket.
- Create an IAM Key which will give Restic access to the S3 Bucket. We recommend you create a restricted key that only allows access to the bucket. Find more details in our IAM Quick Start Guide.
- Get Restic either from the official Restic website or directly from Github and install or copy it to your instance.
- Initialize your Exoscale SOS Bucket with Restic. You need to define a password for your Restic repository. Make sure to store your password safely. If you lose it, you will not be able to access data stored in the repository.
Linux
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<YOUR IAM KEY>
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<YOUR SECRET KEY>
restic -r s3:sos-<BUCKET LOCATION>.exo.io/<BUCKETNAME> init
Windows
set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<YOUR IAM KEY>
set AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<YOUR SECRET KEY>
restic -r s3:sos-<BUCKET LOCATION>.exo.io/<BUCKETNAME> init
Output on Linux (Windows also shows a similar result):
[root@vm2backup ~]# export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=EXO35ac0e9ba39cf65XXXXXXXXX
[root@vm2backup ~]# export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=SECRETKEY-XXXXXX
[root@vm2backup ~]# restic -r s3:sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/restic-de-fra-1 init
enter password for new repository:
enter password again:
created restic repository a94a0d041a at s3:sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/restic-de-fra-1
Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access
the repository. Losing your password means that your data is
irrecoverably lost.
-
Run some test backups to check that everything is functional:
[root@vm2backup ~]# restic -r s3:sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/restic-de-fra-1 backup /tmp enter password for repository: repository 296fefeb opened successfully, password is correct no parent snapshot found, will read all files Files: 122 new, 0 changed, 0 unmodified Dirs: 209 new, 0 changed, 0 unmodified Added to the repo: 466 B processed 122 files, 1.791 GiB in 0:06 snapshot 6557d88b saved -
List all backups (in Restic they are called Snapshots):
[root@vm2backup restic]# restic -r s3:sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/restic-de-fra-1 snapshots enter password for repository: repository 296fefeb opened successfully, password is correct ID Time Host Tags Paths ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6557d88b 2022-05-30 12:46:40 vm2backup /tmp 4e188111 2022-05-30 12:50:03 vm2backup /tmp ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 snapshots
Restore files
In this example, we will restore the whole /tmp from the previous test to /tmp/restore-tmp using the Snapshot ID:
[root@vm2backup ~]# restic -r s3:sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/restic-de-fra-1 restore 6557d88b --target /tmp/restore-tmp
enter password for repository:
repository 296fefeb opened successfully, password is correct
restoring <Snapshot 6557d88b of [/tmp] at 2022-05-30 12:46:40.106028392 +0200 CEST by root@vm2backup> to / tmp/restore-tmp
-
As mentioned in the first step of the setup, you can backup multiple instances to the same SOS bucket:
C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads>restic backup -r s3:sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/restic-de-fra-1 C:\users\Administrator\Downloads repository 296fefeb opened successfully, password is correct using parent snapshot 0dc43c19 Files: 0 new, 0 changed, 112 unmodified Dirs: 0 new, 0 changed, 9 unmodified Added to the repo: 0 B processed 112 files, 365.439 MiB in 0:22 snapshot 6b3f4585 saved -
Listing Restic Snapshots again, you can see multiple hosts:
C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads>restic snapshots -r s3:sos-de-fra-1.exo.io/restic-de-fra-1 repository 296fefeb opened successfully, password is correct ID Time Host Tags Paths --------------------------------------------------------------------- 6557d88b 2022-05-30 12:46:40 vm2backup /tmp 4e188111 2022-05-30 12:50:03 vm2backup /tmp 6b3f4585 2022-05-30 14:05:49 win2backup C:\users\Administrator\Downloads --------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 snapshots
You can use the following snippets as a baseline to run backups on Linux or Windows instances. Please change the values for your Access Key, Secret Key, Restic Repository and your Restic Password.
Your password can also be retrieved from an external program using “–password-command” as an option.
Linux
[root@vm2backup restic]# more .restic_env
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="EXO35ac0e9ba39cf65XXXXXXXXX”
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="SECRETKEY-XXXXXX"
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="s3:sos-<BUCKETLOCATION>.exo.io/<BUCKETNAME>”
export RESTIC_PASSWORD="YourVerySecurePassword"
[root@vm-9e7977cd-755e-4479-9605-0c2f80fd5254 restic]# more backup.sh
#!/usr/bin/bash
if [ -f /root/restic/.restic_env ]
then
. /root/restic/.restic_env
else
echo "No Restic environment found"
exit 1
fi
/usr/bin/restic backup -q / --exclude="/proc" --exclude="/sys"
Windows
C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads>more backup.cmd
@echo off
set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=EXO35ac0e9ba39cf65XXXXXXXXX
set AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=SECRETKEY-XXXXXX
set RESTIC_REPOSITORY=s3:sos-<BUCKETLOCATION>.exo.io/<BUCKETNAME>
set RESTIC_PASSWORD= YourVerySecurePassword
C:\windows\system32\restic backup C:\users\Administrator\Downloads
Restic Housekeeping
Restic includes a housekeeping function to keep only the needed snapshots as defined in the guideline.
restic forget --prune --keep-hourly 6 --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 12
In this example, Restic will keep:
- 6 hourly Snaphosts per Host
- 7 daily Snapshots per Host
- 4 weekly Snapshots per Host
- 12 monthly Snapshots per Host and will remove all other unused data
This command needs to run on one instance only, with a regular (daily) interval.
Additional Resources
See the Restic documentation.