IBM Software Hub offline backup and restore (volume backup utility)

You can back up and restore the files in the PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) of a project (namespace) in your IBM® Software Hub file system with the IBM Software Hub volume backup and restore utility.

Note: Offline backup and restore is deprecated in IBM Software Hub 4.6.0 and will be removed in a future release. If you need to do an offline backup and restore, it is recommended that you use the IBM Software Hub OADP backup and restore utility instead of the volume backup utility. For details, see IBM Software Hub offline backup and restore with the OADP utility.

The IBM Software Hub volume backup and restore utility can back up and restore the file system in two ways:

  1. If you are using Portworx storage, you can create volume snapshots.

    Portworx snapshots are atomic, point-in-time snapshots. You can take snapshots while applications are running, and they typically take much less time than file copying.

  2. You can create volume backups on a separate PVC or on an S3 or S3-compatible object store.

    Volume backups work with any storage type. Use this method if you have IBM Software Hub services that use different storage types, such as NFS (configured with no_root_squash), Portworx, and Red Hat® OpenShift Data Foundation.

The IBM Software Hub volume backup and restore utility supports only offline volume backup and restore. The utility does not provide application level backup and restore that re-creates your Kubernetes resources such as configmaps, secrets, PVCs, PVs, pods, deployments, and StatefulSets. A typical use case is backing up and restoring all volumes in the same project, if the same Kubernetes objects still exist. For some IBM Software Hub services, you must run scripts before and after you run backup and restore operations.

IBM Software Hub is unavailable during offline backup and restore procedures. IBM Software Hub services are typically brought offline so that consistent backups are taken.

Important: For services that do not support offline volume backups, you must back up those services separately by using their service-specific backup process before you back up a IBM Software Hub deployment. For more information about services that do not support offline volume backups, see Services that support backup and restore.