Creating and scheduling online backups of Cloud Pak for Data with IBM Storage Fusion

Create and schedule online backups of a Cloud Pak for Data deployment with IBM® Storage Fusion and the Cloud Pak for Data OADP backup and restore utility.

Before you begin

Ensure that all backup prerequisite tasks are done.

You must be a cluster administrator or a similar role to create backups.

About this task

To create online backups, your Cloud Pak for Data deployment must meet the following requirements:

  • Cloud Pak for Data is deployed on Red Hat® OpenShift® Data Foundation or IBM Storage Scale storage.
  • All services are installed at the same Cloud Pak for Data release.

    You cannot back up and restore a deployment that is running service versions from different Cloud Pak for Data releases.

  • The Cloud Pak for Data control plane is installed in a single project (namespace).
  • The Cloud Pak for Data instance is installed in zero or more tethered projects.
  • Cloud Pak for Data operators and the Cloud Pak for Data instance are in a good state. For more information, see Best practices for monitoring Cloud Pak for Data.

The backup process backs up the following information:

  • Cloud Pak for Data operators project
  • Cloud Pak for Data instance
  • IBM Storage Fusion project
  • IBM Spectrum® Protect Plus catalog

To schedule online backups, you create scheduled backup policies for the following applications in a sequenced order to ensure that the most recent backups are available for a restore:

  1. Cloud Pak for Data operators
  2. Cloud Pak for Data instance

    If you are protecting multiple Cloud Pak for Data instances, create backup policies for each instance.

    Note: If a Cloud Pak for Data instance includes tethered projects, those projects are included in the Cloud Pak for Data instance application.
  3. IBM Storage Fusion project
  4. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus catalog

When you schedule each backup policy, you must specify enough time for each policy to complete before the next one is started. However, if you are protecting multiple Cloud Pak for Data instances, their schedules can overlap and start at the same time or near the same time.

Note: The storage provider that you use to store backups might limit the number of snapshots that you can take per volume. For more information, consult your storage provider documentation.

In IBM Storage Fusion 2.5.2, you can only use the backup and restore (legacy) service to create backups. For more information about this service, see Backup and Restore (Legacy).

Procedure

  1. In IBM Storage Fusion, create a single backup object storage location for the Cloud Pak for Data, IBM Storage Fusion project, and IBM Spectrum Protect Plus catalog backups.
  2. Create daily backup policies for the Cloud Pak for Data and IBM Storage Fusion applications, and tie them to the backup storage location.
    Note: The policy for the IBM Storage Fusion application must have a start time that is later than the completion time of the Cloud Pak for Data policies. Watch the average times for the backups to complete, and adjust the IBM Storage Fusion application start time accordingly.

    For more information about IBM Storage Fusion backup policies, see one of the following pages:

  3. In the Applications menu, assign the policies to the respective applications.
    Note: If your Cloud Pak for Data deployment has tethered projects (namespaces), do not create a backup policy or assign a backup policy to those projects. The tethered projects are handled with the primary IBM Cloud Pak for Data control plane project.
  4. Validate that policy assignments in IBM Storage Fusion are associated to the correct Cloud Pak for Data backup and restore recipes.
    1. Show the existing IBM Storage Fusion policy assignments. 
      export PROJECT_FUSION=<fusion-namespace>
      oc get policyassignments.data-protection.isf.ibm.com -n ${PROJECT_FUSION}
      The command returns output such as in the following example.
      NAME                                                PROVIDER     APPLICATION              BACKUPPOLICY                    RECIPE             RECIPENAMESPACE          PHASE      LASTBACKUPTIMESTAMP   CAPACITY
cpd-policy-for-cpd                                  isf-ibmspp   cpd                      policy-for-cpd                  ibmcpd             cpd                      Assigned   11h                   <no value>
ibm-common-services-policy-for-ibm-common-service   isf-ibmspp   ibm-common-services      policy-for-ibm-common-service   ibmcpd-operators   ibm-common-services      Assigned   21h                   <no value>
ibm-spectrum-fusion-ns-policy-for-fusion-ns         isf-ibmspp   ibm-spectrum-fusion-ns   policy-for-fusion-ns            fusion-cr-backup   ibm-spectrum-fusion-ns   Assigned   11h                   <no value>
    2. Under the RECIPENAMESPACE column, find the Cloud Pak for Data operators project name (ibm-common-services in the example), and verify that the RECIPE column for this project has the value ibmcpd-operators.
    3. Under the RECIPENAMESPACE column, find the Cloud Pak for Data control plane project name (cpd in the example), and verify that the RECIPE column for this project has the value ibmcpd.
  5. If the recipes are not associated to the correct policy assignments, do the following substeps.
    1. Unassign the policies from the applications.
    2. Verify that the cpdbr service is installed in the Cloud Pak for Data operator project and in the Cloud Pak for Data control plane project.

      For more information about installing the cpdbr services, see Installing cpdbr services for IBM Storage Fusion integration.

    3. Verify that the recipe recipes.spp-data-protection.isf.ibm.com was installed in both projects.
    4. Reassign the policies to the respective applications.
    5. Repeat step 4.
  6. Back up the Cloud Pak for Data operators project and the Cloud Pak for Data instance project.
  7. Back up the IBM Storage Fusion project.
    Tip: The default project name when you install IBM Storage Fusion is ibm-spectrum-fusion-ns.
  8. In IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, create a daily backup policy for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus catalog and then back up the catalog.
    1. Retrieve the spp-connection secret to find the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus URL and user interface credentials by running the following commands. 
      oc extract secret/spp-connection --to=- -n ${PROJECT_FUSION}
      Important: Record this information in case you need to recover your cluster from a disaster.
    2. Log in to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.
    3. Select Manage Protection > Policy Overview > Add SLA Policy.
    4. Select the category IBM Spectrum Protect Plus catalog, and then select Catalog to Object Storage.
    5. Set Start Time to 30 minutes after the IBM Storage Fusion control plane policy.
    6. Go to Manage Protection > IBM Spectrum Protect Plus > Backup.
    7. To assign the policy to the catalog backup, under SLA Policy, select the policy that you created and click Save.
    8. In the SLA Status Policy page, click the Actions menu and then click Start to start the backup.

What to do next

If you have services that connect to an external database, such as for business intelligence (BI) reporting, it is recommended that you also back up the database. Backing up the external database ensures data consistency if the Cloud Pak for Data backup is later restored. For example, you need to restore an older Cloud Pak for Data backup instead of the most recent backup. The external database is synchronized with the most recent Cloud Pak for Data backup, so it has data that is not in the backup that you want to restore. To maintain data consistency, you need to restore the external database backup that was taken at the same time as the Cloud Pak for Data backup.