DisasterMan

Backup and recovery manager tool for docker swarm powered by
rdiff-backup to do the copies and a nice
UI using rdiffweb to see and restore the backups.

The system launches an agent container in every node (mode global) and one server
container which stores all copies. The system copies all named volumes (WARNING: it
excludes non-named ones!) from every node using rdiff-backup. The copy process
is automatic every 5 minutes.

The server container also has a nice UI available in port 8080. For more info about
the UI check the project rdiffweb.

For Docker Swarm

This project is developed to use with docker swarm mode, it is not tested with other
orchestators.

NOT for docker-compose

Do not execute this stack with docker-compose, so it is designed to copy all volumes
from each node except the server (where agent is deployed) to the node where the server
is deployed.

Because docker-compose runs all containers in the same machine (same node) and this tool
takes all volumes in /var/lib/docker/volumes for the backup, the tool will back up the
backups volume too, so it will fill the disk very quickly with backups of backups recursively.

Installation

Modify stack.yml according with your neededs using the options section and deploy the stack.

git clone https://github.com/QbitArtifacts/disasterman
cd disasterman
# edit stack.yml ...
docker stack deploy -f stack.yml

Options

Options are passed via environment variables and node labels:

Node labels

Node labelling is useful for avoid to backup the backup server inside itself,
in the example configuration in stack.yml, the server is deployed in a node with
label backups == server and the agents in every other nodes using backups != server
constraint.

So the backup server node must be labelled with backups: server.

Environment VARS

Agent

• CRON_SCHEDULE cron-like schedule for node backups,
  default is */5 * * * * (every 5 minutes).

Server

• HEADER_NAME header name shown at top left of the UI.
• ADMIN_PASSWORD password for user admin to login.
• SMTP_SERVER mail server used for notifications.
• SMTP_ENCRYPTION type of authentication for the server.
• SMTP_USERNAME username for the mailing user.
• SMTP_PASSWORD password for the mailing user.

Backup process

The backup process is fully automatic.

Every minute every agent container makes an incremental copy of its node’s
/var/lib/docker/volumes against the server container. At the first execution,
the agent makes a full backup against server before starting the scheduler,
it may take some time depending of the data to back up.

Restore process

Web Interface

To see and restore files with the Web interface, you must go to <server-ip>:8080, do
login with username admin and password the provided one with ADMIN_PASSWORD env var
and download the compressed copies from the server.

Console

Restore process from the server node it’s easy from the node desired to restore:

# example of restore of all volumes in a node from 10 days ago.
rdiff-backup --restore-as-of 10D $SERVER::/backups/$(/bin/hostname)/volumes /volumes