bandr-ansible

AWX-compatible Ansible playbooks for the deployment of our backup and recovery (bandr) container images as CronJobs (for Backup) and Jobs (for Recovery) to an existing Namespace.

There are two roles, backup and recovery and the playbooks assume a suitable ServiceAccount exists in the corresponding Namespace.

Refer to the bandr repository where you wil find ample documentation in the corresponding backup.py and recovery.py modules relating to how the backup and recovery containers work and how they are configured.

Running a CRON-based backup

If you have a Postgres database in a Kubernetes Namespace you can simplify the deployment of a backup strategy using the site-backup.yaml playbook.

As with most of our Python repositories, create an environment and install the relevant packages, and set your KUBECONFIG to an appropriate file for a cluster: -

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

export KUBECONFIG=~/k8s-configs/config-local

A comprehensive example

In this example let's setup a comprehensive backup strategy that backs up a postgres database every 4 hours, keeping daily backups for a week, weekly backups for a month and monthly backups for 2 years. This will result in a total of 38 backup files (6 hourly + 6 daily + 3 weekly + 23 monthly).

Copy parameters-cron-template.yaml and create a parameters.yaml file (this new file will be ignored from any git commit).

Assuming your database has a Service called database, and your admin user is postgres, then the template variables are already setup to provide you with 2 year's worth of backups as described; you just need to provide: -

• The Namespace
• The ServiceAccount
• The postgres administrator's password
• The backup volume size

With this done, run the playbook: -

ansible-playbook -e @parameters.yaml site-backup.yaml

This example will install four CronJob objects.

Running a one-time backup

Follow the instructions for the Running a CRON-based backup but instead copy the parameters-once-template.yaml. Adjust the variables accordingly and then run the playbook: -

ansible-playbook -e @parameters.yaml site-backup.yaml

Inspecting backups (in the cluster)

Using a parameter file from either a CRON-based or one-time backup, you can use the site-inspect.yaml playbook to launch an Ubuntu Pod so that you can inspect the backups or use the Pod to copy backups to your Kubernetes control host.

Launch an inspection Pod with: -

ansible-playbook -e @parameters.yaml site-inspect.yaml

With this done you can sell into the Pod: -

NAMESPACE=my-namespace
kubectl exec -it bandr-inspect bash -n ${NAMESPACE}

Or copy a backup file from it...

NAMESPACE=my-namespace
BACKUP=backup-2023-01-26T12:28:31Z-dumpall.sql.gz
kubectl cp ${NAMESPACE}/bandr-inspect:/backup/hourly/${BACKUP} ${PWD}/backup.sql.gz

When you're done, use kubectl to delete the Pod.

Testing

To test this repository (Normally done via GitHib Actions) we essentially employ yaml and ansible lint code. From a suitable environment...

python -m venv ~/.venv/bandr-ansible
source ~/.venv/bandr-ansible/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -r build-requirements.txt

Run the following: -

yamllint .
find . -type f -name '*.yaml.j2' -exec yamllint {} +
ansible-lint

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