rsnapshot

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Module Description - What the module does and why it is useful
   • Notes
3. Setup - The basics of getting started with rsnapshot
   • What rsnapshot affects
   • Setup requirements
   • Getting started with rsnapshot
4. Configuration - options and additional functionality
   • Examples
   • More Options
5. Reference - An under-the-hood peek at what the module is doing and how
6. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
7. Development - Guide for contributing to the module
8. Editors
9. Contributors

Overview

The rsnapshot module installs, configures and manages rsnapshot on a dedicated backup server.

Module Description

The rsnapshot module installs, configures and manages rsnapshot on a dedicated backup server. It allows to set up a centralized Backup Server for all your nodes. For the cron setup, the module will pick random time entries for the crons from an Array or a Range of time. For how to configure this, please see below

Notes

This module is best used with an ENC like hiera. It will make your config much easier to read and to maintain. Check the examples to see what I mean.

Setup

What rsnapshot affects

• This module will install the rsnapshot package on your system
• This module will manage the rsnapshot config on your system
• This module will manage cron entries for your configured nodes

Setup Requirements

On CentOS Systems this module requires the stahnma-epel module. Also you will need to have rsync installed on all nodes to be backed up. It will create repeatable random cron entries from a configurable timerange for all hosts.

Getting Started

You will need to pass the nodenames to be backed up at least. This will pickup all defaults and add localhost to the backups:

class { '::rsnapshot':
  hosts => {
    'localhost' => {},
  }
}

Configuration

Here are some more elaborate examples of what you can do with this module.

Examples

This will backup localhost with defaults. It will disable the default backup locations for example.com and just backup '/var' for example.com.

class { '::rsnapshot':
  hosts => {
    'localhost' => {},
    'example.com'    => {
      backup_defaults => false,
      backup          => {
        '/var/'       => './'
      }
    }
  }
}

The same in hiera:

---
classes: rsnapshot
rsnapshot::hosts:
  localhost:
  example.com:
    backup_defaults: false
    backup:
      '/var/': './'

A more complete hiera example:

---
classes: 
  - rsnapshot

# override default backup dirs for all hosts:
rsnapshot::default_backup:
    '/etc':         './'
    '/usr/local':   './'
    '/home':        './'

# configure hosts to be backed up
rsnapshot::hosts:
# pick all defaults for localhost
  localhost:
# add futher backups for node foo.example.com (additional to default_backup) and use a different snapshot root
  foo.example.com:
    backup:
      '/foo':       './'
      '/bar':       './'
      '/baz':       './misc'
    snapshot_root:  '/tmp/rsnapshot'
# all defaults
  foo1.example.com:
  foo2:
# disable default backup dirs and just backup /var for node bar1
# also set the minute to 0-10 for daily cron (note: this is not particularly useful, it's just meant to document the features)
# lastly set the range of hours to pick a random hour from (the cron for bar1 will have hour set to something between 1 and 5)
  bar1:
    backup_defaults: false
    backup:
      '/var': './var'
    cron:
      'daily':
        'minute': '0-10'
        'hour':   '1..5'

More options

The defaults are pretty reasonable, I hope. However, you may override pretty much anything. Available parameters are discussed below.

Specials

As mentioned, this module will generate random time entries for your hosts. The random number generator is hashed with hostname and backup_level, so the randomness will be repeatable per host.level. This is important so puppet won't override the crons with each run. You may specify time ranges as follows:

• default cron syntax (1-10, '*/5', 5)
• an array with allowed values, for example, if you want the backup for a host to run between 1am and 5am, you would override the hours setting for the host in question. in hiera this would look like: (Explanation see below)

rsnapshot::hosts:
  example.com:
    cron:
      'daily':
        'minute': '1'
        'hour':   '1..5'

This will create the rsnapshot config using defaults from params.pp, but set the minute of the daily backup to '1' and the hour to something random between 1 and 5. So it would look something like:

1 4 * * * foo daily

or maybe

1 2 * * * foo daily

Reference

Classes

Public Classes

• rsnapshot: Main class, includes all other classes.

####Private Classes

• rsnapshot::install: Handles the packages.
• rsnapshot::config: Handles configuration and cron files.
• rsnapshot::params: default values.

Functions

####assert_empty_hash Sets an empty value to a hash (we need this so a loop doesn't break if just a hostname is given to pick up all defaults.

####pick_undef Like pick but returns undef values.

####rand_from_array Takes an Integer, a String or an Array as input, and returns a random entry from the array (or just the String/Integer)

Parameters

The following parameters are available in the ::rsnapshot class:

####$hosts Hash containing the hosts to be backed up and optional overrides per host ####$conf_d The place where the configs will be dropped (Default: /etc/rsnapshot (will be created if it doesn't exist)) ####$config_backup_user The user to run the backup scripts as (Default: root, also the user used for ssh connections, if you change this make sure you have proper key deployed and the user exists in the nodes to be backed up.) ####$package_name Default: rsnapshot ####$package_ensure Default: present ####$cron_dir Directory to drop the cron files to. Crons will be created per host. (Default: /etc/cron.d) ####$backup_levels Array containing the backup levels (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly) Configure the backup_levels (valid per host and global, so you may either set: rsnapshot::backup_levels for all hosts or override default backup_levels for specific hosts) ####$backup_defaults Boolean. Backup default backup dirs or not. ####$cron Hash. Set time ranges for different backup levels. Hash is of the form: cron =>{ daily => { minute => param, hour => param, } weekly => { minute => param, hour => param, } {...} }

rsnapshot configuration variables

Please read up on the following in the rsnapshot manpage ####$cmd_cp ####$cmd_rm ####$cmd_rsync ####$cmd_ssh ####$cmd_logger ####$cmd_du ####$cmd_rsnapshot_diff ####$cmd_preexec ####$cmd_postexec ####$use_lvm ####$linux_lvm_cmd_lvcreate ####$linux_lvm_cmd_lvremove ####$linux_lvm_cmd_mount ####$linux_lvm_cmd_umount ####$linux_lvm_snapshotsize ####$linux_lvm_snapshotname ####$linux_lvm_vgpath ####$linux_lvm_mountpath ####$logpath ####$logfile ####$lockpath ####$snapshot_root ####$no_create_root ####$verbose ####$loglevel ####$stop_on_stale_lockfile ####$rsync_short_args ####$rsync_long_args ####$ssh_args ####$du_args ####$one_fs ####$retain ####$interval ####$include ####$exclude ####$include_file ####$exclude_file ####$link_dest ####$sync_first ####$rsync_numtries ####$use_lazy_deletes ####$default_backup ####$backup_scripts

Limitations

Currently, this module support CentOS, Fedora (with the bloonix CentOS Repo), Ubuntu and Debian.

Development

I have limited access to resources and time, so if you think this module is useful, like it, hate it, want to make it better or want it off the face of the planet, feel free to get in touch with me.

Editors

Norbert Varzariu (loomsen)

Contributors

Please see the list of contributors.