Installing and Configuring BOSH Backup and Restore

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This topic describes how to install BOSH Backup and Restore (BBR).

Overview

To install BBR, first validate that your jumpbox VM is a valid BOSH backup host, then copy the BBR executable to the jumpbox.

After installing BBR, you can run bbr commands to back up and restore your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition deployment.

For more information about using BOSH Backup and Restore, see:

Prerequisite

Using BBR requires the following:

  • A jumpbox. You must have a jumpbox before you can install BBR to the jumpbox.
  • A bbr executable file. You must have the correct BBR executable version for your TKGI installation.

A jumpbox is a separate, hardened server on your network that provides a controlled means of accessing the other VMs on your network. See the jumpbox-deployment GitHub repository for an example jumpbox deployment.

To determine the correct version of BBR for your deployment, see the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition Release Notes. To download a BBR installation file, see BOSH Backup and Restore on the VMware Tanzu Network.

Configure Your Jumpbox for BBR

Configure your jumpbox to meet the following requirements:

  • Your jumpbox must be able to communicate with the network that contains your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition deployment. You can use the Ops Manager VM as your jumpbox.
  • Your jumpbox must have sufficient space for the backup.
  • Your jumpbox must be in the same network as the deployed VMs because BBR connects to the VMs at their private IP addresses. BBR does not support SSH gateways.
  • Your jumpbox should be a host with minimal network latency to the source VMs you are configuring BBR to backup.

Note: BBR uses SSH to orchestrate the backup of your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition instances using port 22 by default.

Install BBR on Your Jumpbox

Copy the bbr executable to a local disk then upload the executable to the jumpbox:

  1. Download the latest BOSH Backup and Restore release from VMware Tanzu Network.

  2. To add executable permissions to the bbr binary file, run the following command:

    chmod a+x bbr

  3. To securely copy the bbr binary file to your jumpbox, run the following command:

    scp LOCAL-PATH-TO-BBR/bbr JUMPBOX-USER@JUMPBOX-ADDRESS:

    Where:

    • LOCAL-PATH-TO-BBR is the path to the bbr binary you downloaded from VMware Tanzu Network.
    • JUMPBOX-USER is the ssh username for connecting to the jumpbox.
    • JUMPBOX-ADDRESS is the IP address, or hostname, of the jumpbox.

Verify BBR Installation

To verify the that BBR is installed, run the following command:

bbr version

Configure BBR Logging

By default, BBR displays the following:

  • The backup and restore scripts that it finds
  • When it starts or finishes a stage, such as pre-backup scripts or backup scripts
  • When the process is complete
  • When any error occurs

BBR writes any errors associated with stack traces to a file in of the form bbr-TIMESTAMP.err.log in the current directory.

To troubleshoot a failed backup or restore using BBR, you can enable verbose logging using the . If more logging is needed, use the optional --debug flag to print the following information:

  • Logs about the API requests made to the BOSH server
  • All commands executed on remote instances
  • All commands executed on local environment
  • Standard in and standard out streams for the backup and restore scripts when they are executed

Please send any feedback you have to pks-feedback@pivotal.io.