Backup & Restore

Please note this is work in progress.

The following backup strategies are possible in general:

• Backup on the Virtual Machine level
  • This will include all data as well as the software, and will therefore allow you to restore the exact configuration with all data.
• Back up all Persistent Volumes in Kubernetes
  • All payload data is in Persistent Volumes, so it is possible to take snapshots of that data if your storage provides allows for this.
  • Together with the Helm Chart and the values.yaml file it is possible to restore the same configuration.
• Don’t back up, and replicate instead:
  • Application level replication to another site is possible for:
    • Mariadb
    • Cyrus IMAP
    • Minio
• Backing up on an application level
  • Mariadb: via mysqldump or mariabackup
  • Cyrus IMAP: filesystem snapshot via rsync
  • Minio:

Replication and application level back-ups are more complex to handle because they require specific measures for each of the the various components. However, they allow for more granular control and allow for live backups.

Please note that for file-system level backups it is required that either all processes are stopped before taking the backup, or that there is filesystem level support for snapshots (Otherwise corrupt snapshots are possible).