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Restore the cluster from a previously saved backup

The Operator supports the ability to perform a full restore on a PostgreSQL cluster as well as a point-in-time-recovery. There are two ways to restore a cluster:

Restore to a new PostgreSQL cluster

Restoring to a new PostgreSQL cluster allows you to take a backup and create a new PostgreSQL cluster that can run alongside an existing one. There are several scenarios where using this technique is helpful:

  • Creating a copy of a PostgreSQL cluster that can be used for other purposes. Another way of putting this is creating a clone.
  • Restore to a point-in-time and inspect the state of the data without affecting the current cluster.

To create a new PostgreSQL cluster from either the active one, or a former cluster whose pgBackRest repository still exists, use the dataSource.postgresCluster subsection options. The content of this subsection should copy the backups keys of the original cluster - ones needed to carry on the restore:

  • dataSource.postgresCluster.clusterName should contain the new cluster name,
  • dataSource.postgresCluster.options allow you to set the needed pgBackRest command line options,
  • dataSource.postgresCluster.repoName should contain the name of the pgBackRest repository, while the actual storage configuration keys for this repository should be placed into dataSource.pgbackrest.repo subsection,
  • dataSource.pgbackrest.configuration.secret.name should contain the name of a Kubernetes Secret with credentials needed to access cloud storage, if any.

Restore to an existing PostgreSQL cluster

To restore the previously saved backup, use a backup restore configuration file. The example of the backup configuration file is deploy/restore.yaml :

apiVersion: pgv2.percona.com/v2
kind: PerconaPGRestore
metadata:
  name: restore1
spec:
  pgCluster: cluster1
  repoName: repo1
  options:
  - --type=time
  - --target="2022-11-30 15:12:11+03"

The following keys are the most important ones:

  • pgCluster specifies the name of your cluster,
  • repoName specifies the name of one of the 4 pgBackRest repositories, already configured in the backups.pgbackrest.repos subsection,
  • options passes through any pgBackRest command line options .

To start the restoration process, run the following command:

$ kubectl apply -f deploy/restore.yaml

Restore the cluster with point-in-time recovery

Point-in-time recovery functionality allows users to revert the database back to a state before an unwanted change had occurred.

Note

For this feature to work, the Operator initiates a full backup immediately after the cluster creation, to use it as a basis for point-in-time recovery when needed (this backup is not listed in the output of the kubectl get pg-backup command).

You can set up a point-in-time recovery using the normal restore command of pgBackRest with few additional spec.options fields in deploy/restore.yaml:

  • set --type option to time,
  • set --target to a specific time you would like to restore to. You can use the typical string formatted as <YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:DD>, optionally followed by a timezone offset: "2021-04-16 15:13:32+00" (+00 in the above example means UTC),
  • optional --set argument allows you to choose the backup which will be the starting point for point-in-time recovery. You can look through the available backups with the kubectl get pg-backup command to find out the proper backup name. This option must be specified if the target is one or more backups away from the current moment.

After setting these options in the backup restore configuration file, follow the standard restore instructions.

Note

Make sure you have a backup that is older than your desired point in time. You obviously can’t restore from a time where you do not have a backup. All relevant write-ahead log files must be successfully pushed before you make the restore.

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Last update: 2024-04-17