Back Up a TiDB Cluster Using EBS Volume Snapshots

This document describes how to back up a TiDB cluster deployed on AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) to S3.

The backup method described in this document is implemented based on CustomResourceDefinition (CRD) in TiDB Operator. For the underlying implementation, BR is used to get the backup data of the TiDB cluster, and then send the data to the AWS storage. BR stands for Backup & Restore, which is a command-line tool for distributed backup and recovery of the TiDB cluster data. If your TiDB cluster is deployed on AWS EKS and uses EBS volumes, you can use the method described in this document to back up the TiDB cluster.

Recommended scenarios and limitations

Recommended scenarios

If you have the following requirements when backing up TiDB cluster data, you can use TiDB Operator to back up the data by volume snapshots and metadata to AWS S3:

• Minimize the impact of backup, for example, to keep the impact on QPS and transaction latency less than 5%, and to occupy no cluster CPU and memory.
• Back up and restore data in a short time. For example, finish backup within 1 hour and restore in 2 hours.

If you have any other requirements, select an appropriate backup method based on Backup and Restore Overview.

Limitations

• Snapshot backup is applicable to TiDB Operator v1.4.0 or above, and TiDB v6.3.0 or above.
• To use this backup method, the TiDB cluster must be deployed on AWS EKS and uses AWS EBS volumes.
• This backup method is currently not supported for TiFlash, TiCDC, DM, and TiDB Binlog nodes.

Backup process

You can either fully or incrementally back up snapshots based on AWS EBS volumes. The first backup of a node is full, and subsequent backups are incremental. Snapshot backup is defined by a customized Backup custom resource (CR) object. TiDB Operator completes the backup task based on this object. If an error occurs during the backup process, TiDB Operator does not retry automatically. At this time, you need to handle it manually.

The following sections exemplify how to back up data of the TiDB cluster demo1. demo1 is deployed in the test1 namespace in Kubernetes.

Step 1. Set up the environment for EBS volume snapshot backup

1. Download the file backup-rbac.yaml to the backup server.

2. Create the RBAC-related resources required for the backup in the test1 namespace by running the following command:

   kubectl apply -f backup-rbac.yaml -n test1
   

3. Grant permissions to access remote storage.

   To back up cluster data and save snapshot metadata to Amazon S3, you need to grant permissions to remote storage. Three ways are available. See AWS account authorization.

Step 2. Back up data to S3 storage

Based on the authorization method you selected in the previous step to grant remote storage access, you can back up data to S3 storage using any of the following methods accordingly:

• Method 1: If you grant permissions by accessKey and secretKey, you can create the Backup CR as follows:

  kubectl apply -f backup-aws-s3.yaml
  

  The backup-aws-s3.yaml file has the following content:

  ---
  apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
  kind: Backup
  metadata:
    name: demo1-backup-s3
    namespace: test1
  spec:
    backupType: full
    backupMode: volume-snapshot
    br:
      cluster: demo1
      clusterNamespace: test1
      # logLevel: info
    s3:
      provider: aws
      secretName: s3-secret
      region: us-west-1
      bucket: my-bucket
      prefix: my-folder
  

• Method 2: If you grant permissions by associating Pod with IAM, you can create the Backup CR as follows:

  kubectl apply -f backup-aws-s3.yaml
  

  The backup-aws-s3.yaml file has the following content:

  ---
  apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
  kind: Backup
  metadata:
    name: demo1-backup-s3
    namespace: test1
    annotations:
      iam.amazonaws.com/role: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/user
  spec:
    backupMode: volume-snapshot
    br:
      cluster: demo1
      clusterNamespace: test1
      # logLevel: info
    s3:
      provider: aws
      region: us-west-1
      bucket: my-bucket
      prefix: my-folder
  

• Method 3: If you grant permissions by associating ServiceAccount with IAM, you can create the Backup CR as follows:

  kubectl apply -f backup-aws-s3.yaml
  

  The backup-aws-s3.yaml file has the following content:

  ---
  apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
  kind: Backup
  metadata:
    name: demo1-backup-s3
    namespace: test1
  spec:
    backupType: full
    backupMode: volume-snapshot
    serviceAccount: tidb-backup-manager
    br:
      cluster: demo1
      clusterNamespace: test1
      # logLevel: info
    s3:
      provider: aws
      region: us-west-1
      bucket: my-bucket
      prefix: my-folder
  

When configuring backup-aws-s3.yaml, note the following:

• To back up data using volume snapshots, you need to set spec.br.backupMode to volume-snapshot.
• For storage configurations of Amazon S3, see S3 storage fields.
• Some parameters in .spec.br are optional, such as logLevel. You can decide whether to configure them based on your needs.

After creating the Backup CR, TiDB Operator automatically starts the backup process. You can check the backup status using the following command:

kubectl get bk -n test1 -o wide

Delete the Backup CR

After a backup is completed, you might need to delete the Backup CR. For details, see Delete the Backup CR.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter any problem during the backup process, see Common Deployment Failures of TiDB on Kubernetes.