Vault Agent for Raft Integrated Storage Backup (draft)

The problem: Snapshot automation, "No out-of-the-box automation tool" for Raft storage snapshots

A suggested solution: The Vault Agent and the snapshot cronjob can be deployed on a remote backup server or on the Vault instances itself.

Prerequisites

The automation code (Ansible playbook and Terraform) does not automatically install the Vault binary.

Vault Policy

Policy for the snapshot agent:

echo '
path "sys/storage/raft/snapshot" {
   capabilities = ["read"]
}' | vault policy write snapshot -

This policy is included in the ./terraform code.

AppRole Authentication

These manual steps for AppRole authentication are automated in the ./terraform code.

Enable AppRole and create the vault-snap-agent role:

vault auth enable approle
vault write auth/approle/role/vault-snap-agent token_ttl=2h token_policies=snapshot
#vault read auth/approle/role/vault-snap-agent
vault read auth/approle/role/vault-snap-agent/role-id -format=json | jq -r .data.role_id # sudo tee vault-host:/etc/vault.d/snap-roleid
vault write -f auth/approle/role/vault-snap-agent/secret-id -format=json | jq -r .data.secret_id # sudo tee vault-host:/etc/vault.d/snap-secretid

On all Vault servers:

echo "7581f63b-e36b-e105-0c6d-07c534c916c4" > /etc/vault.d/snap-roleid
echo "91919667-7587-4a69-a4f9-766358b082ac" > /etc/vault.d/snap-secretid
chmod 0640 /etc/vault.d/snap-{roleid,secretid}
chown vault:vault /etc/vault.d/snap-{roleid,secretid}

Vault Agent Configuration

Configure the vault agent for the snapshots:

cat << EOF > /etc/vault.d/vault_snapshot_agent.hcl
# Vault agent configuration for Raft snapshots

vault {
  address = "https://$HOSTNAME:8200"
}

auto_auth {
  method {
    # Authenticate with AppRole
    # https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/agent/autoauth/methods/approle
    type      = "approle"

    config = {
      role_id_file_path = "/etc/vault.d/snap-roleid"
      secret_id_file_path = "/etc/vault.d/snap-secretid"
      remove_secret_id_file_after_reading = false
    }
  }

  sink {
    # write Vault token to file
    # https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/agent/autoauth/sinks/file
    type = "file"

    config = {
      # best practice to write the file to a ramdisk (0640)
      # have a look at wrapped token for advanced configuration
      path = "/run/vault-snap-agent/token"
    }
  }
}
EOF

Vault Agent Systemd Service

Configure the systemd service for the snapshot agent:

cat << EOF > /etc/systemd/system/vault-snap-agent.service
[Unit]
Description=Vault Snapshot Agent
Requires=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
ConditionFileNotEmpty=/etc/vault.d/vault.hcl

[Service]
Restart=on-failure
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/vault agent -config=/etc/vault.d/vault_snapshot_agent.hcl
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
KillSignal=SIGINT
User=vault
Group=vault
RuntimeDirectoryMode=0750
RuntimeDirectory=vault-snap-agent

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Start the agent on all Vault servers:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now vault-snap-agent

Vault Raft Snapshot Cronjob

Create a cronjob or an systemd service/timer unit (matter of preference).

Create a script to execute the snapshot:

cat << 'EOF' > /usr/local/bin/vault-snapshot
#!/bin/sh
#
# Take Vault Raft integrated storage snapshots on the leader
# See also:
#  - /etc/vault.d/vault_snapshot_agent.hcl
#  - /etc/systemd/system/vault-agent.service

VAULT_TOKEN=$(cat /run/vault-snap-agent/token) VAULT_ADDR="https://$HOSTNAME:8200" \
/usr/local/bin/vault operator raft snapshot save "/opt/vault/snapshots/vault-raft_$(date +%F-%H%M).snapshot"
EOF

Make the script executable:

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/vault-snapshot

Take hourly snapshots with cron, make sure the cronjobs are evenly spaced out every hour (e.g. server1: Minute 0, server2: Minute 20, server3: Minute 40):

echo "0 * * * * root /usr/local/bin/vault-snapshot" >> /etc/crontab

Test the script (errors probably in /var/spool/mail/root):

vault-snapshot

Verify Backup

List the backups:

[root@vault1 ~]# ls -l /opt/vault/snapshots
total 96
-rw-r--r--. 1 root  root      0 May 29 06:37 vault-raft_2020-05-29-0637.snapshot
-rw-r--r--. 1 root  root  21451 May 29 07:03 vault-raft_2020-05-29-0703.snapshot

Sync with remote storage

S3

Install s3cmd: https://github.com/s3tools/s3cmd/releases

zypper install python3
ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python

wget <s3cmd-release-url>
tar xvf s3cmd-x.x.x.tar.gz
cd s3cmd-x.x.x
python setup.py install

Configure s3cmd:

s3cmd --configure
s3cmd mb s3://raft-snapshots

Add s3cmd sync to vault-snapshot:

echo "/usr/bin/s3cmd sync /opt/vault/snapshots/* s3://raft-snapshots" >> /usr/local/bin/vault-snapshot

Retention

For an retention of 7 days (locally, not on the remote storage) you need to add the following to the vault-snapshot script:

find /opt/vault/snapshots/* -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;

To change the retention you can change the +7 from the mtime parameter.