Setting up manual backup

When doing a manual backup, you would copy a single volume (in its entirety) and send the data to the backup system.

We recommend first reading through our general information on backups to get more information about the backup system.

You are able to use one of the following methods to take a backup.

Note

It will take some time to take a backup as it involves moving all data of the server to the backup storage.

Cloud management portal

To create a backup of a volume by using the Cloud management portal

  • Press Storage and then Backups in the sidebar menu.

  • Press the + icon in the lower right corner.

  • Select a volume from the dropdown menu. If you are unsure about which volume (ID) you can check the instance to see which volumes is currently attached to it:

    • Press Compute and then Instances.

    • Press the instance you want to backup.

    • Press the Volumes tab.

    • Note the name of the attached volumes (there might be many).

  • Give your backup a name.

  • Press Force if the volume is currently attached to an instance or else the backup will give an error.

  • Optionally, give your backup a description.

  • Press Create backup

Note

An option for doing incremental backups exists but the platform will not keep track of the full backups.

OpenStack Horizon

To create a backup of a volume by using OpenStack Horizon

  • Under Project, click Volumes and then Volumes in the sidebar menu.

  • Click Create backup in the dropdown menu to the far right on the row of the volume that you want to backup. You are able to see which instance the volume is currently attached to in the Attached to column.

  • Give your backup a name and optionally a description.

  • Optionally select a snapshot if you want to backup based on a snapshot and not the entire disk.

  • Press the Create volume backup button.

OpenStack Terminal Client

To create a volume by using the OpenStack Terminal Client

  • Run this command: openstack volume list, save the ID of the volume you want to backup. Its visible which instance the volumes is currently attached to in the Attached to column.

  • Run this command: openstack volume backup create --force --name [BACKUP_NAME] [VOLUME_ID], replacing with the name of the backup and the ID from the previous step.

  • If you want to backup a snapshot, you could instead first list the snapshots by running openstack volume snapshot list and then backup using openstack volume backup create --force --name [BACKUP_NAME] --snapshot [SNAPSHOT_ID] [VOLUME_ID]

Note

The --force is only required if the volume is attached to an instance.

See also