Important

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Back up Data to PV Using BR

This document describes how to back up the data of a TiDB cluster in Kubernetes to Persistent Volumes (PVs). BR is used to get the backup of the TiDB cluster, and then the backup data is sent to PVs.

PVs in this documentation can be any Kubernetes supported Persistent Volume types. This document uses NFS as an example PV type.

Note

The backup method described in this document is supported starting from TiDB Operator v1.1.8.

Ad-hoc backup

Ad-hoc backup supports both full backup and incremental backup. It describes the backup by creating a Backup Custom Resource (CR) object. TiDB Operator performs the specific backup operation based on this Backup object. If an error occurs during the backup process, TiDB Operator does not retry, and you need to handle this error manually.

This document provides examples in which the data of the demo1 TiDB cluster in the test1 Kubernetes namespace is backed up to NFS.

Prerequisites for ad-hoc backup

Note

If TiDB Operator >= v1.1.10 && TiDB >= v4.0.8, BR will automatically adjust tikv_gc_life_time. You do not need to configure spec.tikvGCLifeTime and spec.from fields in the Backup CR. In addition, you can skip the steps of creating the backup-demo1-tidb-secret secret and configuring database account privileges.

Download backup-rbac.yaml, and execute the following command to create the role-based access control (RBAC) resources in the test1 namespace:
```
kubectl apply -f backup-rbac.yaml -n test1
```
Create the backup-demo1-tidb-secret secret which stores the root account and password needed to access the TiDB cluster:
```
kubectl create secret generic backup-demo1-tidb-secret --from-literal=password=<password> --namespace=test1
```

Ensure that the NFS server is accessible from your Kubernetes cluster, and TiKV is configured to mount the same NFS server directory to the same local path as in backup jobs. To mount NFS for TiKV, refer to the configuration below:

spec:
  tikv:
    additionalVolumes:
    # specify volume types that are supported by Kubernetes, Ref: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/storage/persistent-volumes/#types-of-persistent-volumes
    - name: nfs
      nfs:
        server: 192.168.0.2
        path: /nfs
    additionalVolumeMounts:
    # this must match `name` in `additionalVolumes`
    - name: nfs
      mountPath: /nfs

Required database account privileges

The SELECT and UPDATE privileges of the mysql.tidb table: Before and after the backup, the Backup CR needs a database account with these privileges to adjust the GC time.

Process of ad-hoc backup

Create the Backup CR, and back up cluster data to NFS as described below:

kubectl apply -f backup-nfs.yaml

The content of backup-nfs.yaml is as follows:

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-nfs
  namespace: test1
spec:
  # # backupType: full
  # # Only needed for TiDB Operator < v1.1.10 or TiDB < v4.0.8
  # from:
  #   host: ${tidb-host}
  #   port: ${tidb-port}
  #   user: ${tidb-user}
  #   secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
  br:
    cluster: demo1
    clusterNamespace: test1
    # logLevel: info
    # statusAddr: ${status-addr}
    # concurrency: 4
    # rateLimit: 0
    # checksum: true
    # options:
    # - --lastbackupts=420134118382108673
  local:
    prefix: backup-nfs
    volume:
      name: nfs
      nfs:
        server: ${nfs_server_ip}
        path: /nfs
    volumeMount:
      name: nfs
      mountPath: /nfs

In the example above, spec.local refers to the configuration related to PVs. For more information about PV configuration, refer to Local storage fields.

In the example above, some parameters in spec.br can be ignored, such as logLevel, statusAddr, concurrency, rateLimit, checksum, and timeAgo. For more information about BR configuration, refer to BR fields.

Since TiDB Operator v1.1.6, if you want to back up data incrementally, you only need to specify the last backup timestamp --lastbackupts in spec.br.options. For the limitations of incremental backup, refer to Use BR to Back up and Restore Data.

For more information about the Backup CR fields, refer to Backup CR fields.

This example backs up all data in the TiDB cluster to NFS.

After creating the Backup CR, use the following command to check the backup status:
```
kubectl get bk -n test1 -owide
```

Backup CR examples

Back up data of all clusters

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-nfs
  namespace: test1
spec:
  # # backupType: full
  # # Only needed for TiDB Operator < v1.1.10 or TiDB < v4.0.8
  from:
    host: ${tidb-host}
    port: ${tidb-port}
    user: ${tidb-user}
    secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
  br:
    cluster: demo1
    clusterNamespace: test1
  local:
    prefix: backup-nfs
    volume:
      name: nfs
      nfs:
        server: ${nfs_server_ip}
        path: /nfs
    volumeMount:
      name: nfs
      mountPath: /nfs

Back up data of a single database

The following example backs up data of the db1 database.

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-nfs
  namespace: test1
spec:
  # # backupType: full
  # # Only needed for TiDB Operator < v1.1.10 or TiDB < v4.0.8
  from:
    host: ${tidb-host}
    port: ${tidb-port}
    user: ${tidb-user}
    secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
  tableFilter:
  - "db1.*"
  br:
    cluster: demo1
    clusterNamespace: test1
  local:
    prefix: backup-nfs
    volume:
      name: nfs
      nfs:
        server: ${nfs_server_ip}
        path: /nfs
    volumeMount:
      name: nfs
      mountPath: /nfs

Back up data of a single table

The following example backs up data of the db1.table1 table.

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-nfs
  namespace: test1
spec:
  # # backupType: full
  # # Only needed for TiDB Operator < v1.1.10 or TiDB < v4.0.8
  from:
    host: ${tidb-host}
    port: ${tidb-port}
    user: ${tidb-user}
    secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
  tableFilter:
  - "db1.table1"
  br:
    cluster: demo1
    clusterNamespace: test1
  local:
    prefix: backup-nfs
    volume:
      name: nfs
      nfs:
        server: ${nfs_server_ip}
        path: /nfs
    volumeMount:
      name: nfs
      mountPath: /nfs

Back up data of multiple tables using the table filter

The following example backs up data of the db1.table1 table and db1.table2 table.

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-nfs
  namespace: test1
spec:
  # # backupType: full
  # # Only needed for TiDB Operator < v1.1.10 or TiDB < v4.0.8
  from:
    host: ${tidb-host}
    port: ${tidb-port}
    user: ${tidb-user}
    secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
  tableFilter:
  - "db1.table1"
  - "db1.table2"
  br:
    cluster: demo1
    clusterNamespace: test1
  local:
    prefix: backup-nfs
    volume:
      name: nfs
      nfs:
        server: ${nfs_server_ip}
        path: /nfs
    volumeMount:
      name: nfs
      mountPath: /nfs

Scheduled full backup

You can set a backup policy to perform scheduled backups of the TiDB cluster, and set a backup retention policy to avoid excessive backup items. A scheduled full backup is described by a custom BackupSchedule CR object. A full backup is triggered at each backup time point. Its underlying implementation is the ad-hoc full backup.

Prerequisites for scheduled full backup

The prerequisites for the scheduled full backup is the same with the prerequisites for ad-hoc backup.

Process of scheduled full backup

Create the BackupSchedule CR, and back up cluster data as described below:

kubectl apply -f backup-schedule-nfs.yaml

The content of backup-schedule-nfs.yaml is as follows:

 ---
 apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
 kind: BackupSchedule
 metadata:
   name: demo1-backup-schedule-nfs
   namespace: test1
 spec:
   #maxBackups: 5
   #pause: true
   maxReservedTime: "3h"
   schedule: "*/2 * * * *"
   backupTemplate:
     # Only needed for TiDB Operator < v1.1.10 or TiDB < v4.0.8
     # from:
     #   host: ${tidb_host}
     #   port: ${tidb_port}
     #   user: ${tidb_user}
     #   secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
     br:
       cluster: demo1
       clusterNamespace: test1
       # logLevel: info
       # statusAddr: ${status-addr}
       # concurrency: 4
       # rateLimit: 0
       # checksum: true
     local:
       prefix: backup-nfs
       volume:
         name: nfs
         nfs:
           server: ${nfs_server_ip}
           path: /nfs
       volumeMount:
         name: nfs
         mountPath: /nfs

After creating the scheduled full backup, use the following command to check the backup status:
```
kubectl get bks -n test1 -owide
```
Use the following command to check all the backup items:
```
kubectl get bk -l tidb.pingcap.com/backup-schedule=demo1-backup-schedule-nfs -n test1
```

From the example above, you can see that the backupSchedule configuration consists of two parts. One is the unique configuration of backupSchedule, and the other is backupTemplate.

backupTemplate specifies the configuration related to the cluster and remote storage, which is the same as the spec configuration of the Backup CR. For the unique configuration of backupSchedule, refer to BackupSchedule CR fields.

Delete the backup CR

Refer to Delete the Backup CR.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter any problem during the backup process, refer to Common Deployment Failures.