digitaloceanbackup

Automated server script to take snapshot for DigitalOcean server, keep only latest N snapshots to keep cost low

Why?

Backup server via snapshoting and transfer to Amazon's S3, or Glacier is more costly than directly use snapshoting service provided by DigitalOcean. Due to policy of penalty that will occurred if delete file before 60/90 days as per Amazon; that kills the cheap as-advertised.

Check DigitalOcean's Pricing for Snapshots, it's listed as $0.05 per GB per month and if it's destroyed before the month over it will be charged per-hour basis just like Droplet. This is way better, and cheaper than Amazon.

Roughly as per my calculation, we can keep it as low as < $5 per month for Droplet with 30GB while keeping 3 latest snapshots. It's mostly a matter of how large the Droplet is.

Logic Behind

The script will takes setting in config.json as for Droplet Ids and number of holding snapshots before deleting into effect. It will make a request to DigitalOcean API for list of all snapshots for target Droplet Id to determine whether it needs to delete old snapshots first before creating a new one (snapshoting a Droplet) or not.

It can happen that such Droplet has many snapshots far exceeding the number of holding snapshots as set in config.json. Then it will try to delete all of old snapshots first before proceed to create a new one.

How to

Main Settings

You first need to create DigitalOcean's access token by going to API menu.

Then copy that access token, and define on your server's environment variable via

• DIGITALOCEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN=<your access token>

Notifying of Backing up Result (optional)

To be able to notify successful, or failed message to your WeChat account via your WeChat Official/Subscription account with granted permission to send templated message. Then defines all of the following settings.

• WECHAT_APPID=<your app id>

  Check at mp.weixin.qq.com for your WeChat official / subscription account.

• WECHAT_APPSECRET=<your app secret>

  Check at mp.weixin.qq.com for your WeChat official / subscription account.

• WECHAT_SU_OPENID=<user open id to receive msgs>

  You can find out what is your open id attached to your WeChat official / subscription account you followed by listing followers list via Follow List API.

• WECHAT_SUCCESS_TEMPLATE_ID=<your template id>

  Check at mp.weixin.qq.com for Template Message section (you might need to apply to grant this ability). Then add a template that has at least 2 keywords, with 1 remark.

• WECHAT_FAIL_TEMPLATE_ID=<your template id>

  Check at mp.weixin.qq.com for Template Message section (you might need to apply to grant this ability). Then add a template that has at least 4 keywords, with 1 remark.

You need to set all of above environment variables in order to make it works.

Run the Program

• Clone this repo to your server.
• Execute npm install.
• Create config.json file at the same level of index.js and configuring it by supplying your Droplet ID, and number of snapshots to hold before deleting oldest ones. See section Config File (config.json) for more info of its format.
• Configure environment variables as needed according to section of Main settings and Notifying of Backing up Result (optional).
• Execute node index.js. You can hook it up via crontab as well. Also you can symlink index.js to your executable path. It's up to you.

Config File (config.json)

The content of config file is as follows

{
	"droplet_ids": [
		"<your droplet id 1>",
		"<your droplet id 2>"
	],
	"hold_snapshots": 3
}

Define your droplet_ids, it can be just one or multiple.

You can get your Droplet IDs by seeing its API at List all Droplets. Copy Curl example and supply with your access token to execute such command. You will get result. Just take your Droplet ids of interest and supply into config.json.

Note

DigitalOcean takes some time to create a snapshot.

From my experience, 30GB in size of server will take almost 20 minutes. During this time, if you try to list all snapshots for Droplet Id, you won't get any which is in-creating progress. So keep in mind to take this period as a non-safe period to execute any script as the script cannot know whether there's any snapshots in creating.

Billing for snapshots also starts from snapshot creation time. Thus be decisive of how frequently you backup, and how many old snapshots you would like to hold with this project. Larger in size snapshot will take longer time to create as well; although cost might be neglectible.

Other misc notes

• per_page param is with maximum of 200, the script doesn't supply any such param when makes a request. Thus support up to 200 snapshots.

What's Next?

• [] Make getting Droplet Ids more comfortable and less effort to get. Ideally doesn't involve user to execute API by himself/herself.

License

Wasin Thonkaew, MIT