Managing Catena Backup in AWS

Periodic Backups of EC2 host

The Catena EC2 instance uses the EBS volume created during terraform deploy for it's persistent storage. Periodic snapshots (daily/weekly/monthly/etc) of the Catena deployment's EC2 host can be made using the AWS EBS snapshot procedures outlined in AWS documentation

Manual Backup/Restore of Catena Databases

The individual Catena Sqlite3 and Redis databases can be manually backed up and restored as needed with the following procedures:

Catena Sqlite3 Backup

1. Login to EC2 instance console

Navigate to the EC2 instance in AWS console
Click the 'Connect' button
This will give you a shell on the EC2 instance (Catena host) as the 'ubuntu' user

2. Make backups of Sqlite3 database files using the SqLite3 Online Backup API from the command line

The database directories are mounted into the Catena container from the EC2 host under:
Sqlite3:
/var/lib/dokku/data/storage/platform/Database/SqliteDatabase

Issue the command:

sudo sqlite3 source.db ".backup target.db"  

This creates a backup of source.db to target.db safely

3. Copy backup files to the 'catena-backup' S3 bucket

Issue the command:

aws s3 cp /path/to/your/file s3://catena-backup/  

Example (connected to Catena EC2 instance through AWS console):

cd /var/lib/dokku/data/storage/platform/Database/SqliteDatabase  
sudo sqlite3 accounts.db ".backup /home/ubuntu/backup_accounts.db"  
aws s3 cp /home/ubuntu/backup_accounts.db s3://catena-backup  
rm /home/ubuntu/backup_accounts.db  

Note:
Catena sessions have a relatively short lifetime (approx 30 minutes) so backing up session.db for loss prevention may not be effective

Catena Sqlite3 Backup Restore

1. Login to EC2 instance console

Navigate to the EC2 instance in AWS console
Click the 'Connect' button
This will give you a shell on the EC2 instance (Catena host) as the 'ubuntu' user

2. Copy backup from the 'catena-backup' S3 bucket to the Catena database directory

The database directories are mounted into the Catena container from the EC2 host under:
Sqlite3:
/var/lib/dokku/data/storage/platform/Database/SqliteDatabase

Issue the command:

aws s3 cp s3://source-bucket/path/to/file .  

3. Restore the database backup copy to the live database

Issue the command:

sudo sqlite3 target_database.db ".restore backupfile.db"  

Example (connected to Catena EC2 instance through AWS console):

aws s3 cp s3://catena-backup/backup_accounts.db /home/ubuntu/backup_accounts.db  
cd /var/lib/dokku/data/storage/platform/Database/SqliteDatabase  
sudo sqlite3 ./accounts.db ".restore /home/ubuntu/backup_accounts.db  
rm /home/ubuntu/backup_accounts.db  

Catena Redis Backup

1. Login to EC2 instance console

Navigate to the EC2 instance in AWS console
Click the 'Connect' button
This will give you a shell on the EC2 instance (Catena host) as the 'ubuntu' user

2. Make backups of the Redis database using dokku commands from the command line

Issue the command:

sudo dokku redis:list  
sudo dokku redis:export <service> > data.dump  

This creates a backup of the redis database to data.dump

3. Copy backup files to the 'catena-backup' S3 bucket

Issue the command:

aws s3 cp /path/to/your/file s3://catena-backup/  

Example (connected to Catena EC2 instance through AWS console):

sudo dokku redis:list  
sudo dokku redis:export catena-redis > data.dump  
aws s3 cp /home/ubuntu/backup_accounts.db s3://catena-backup  
rm data.dump  

Note:
Catena sessions have a relatively short lifetime (approx 30 minutes) so backing up session information contained in redis for loss prevention may not be effective

Catena Redis Backup Restore

1. Login to EC2 instance console

Navigate to the EC2 instance in AWS console
Click the 'Connect' button
This will give you a shell on the EC2 instance (Catena host) as the 'ubuntu' user

2. Copy backup from the 'catena-backup' S3 bucket to the Catena database directory

Issue the command:

aws s3 cp s3://source-bucket/path/to/file .  

3. Restore the database backup copy to the live database

Issue the command:

sudo dokku redis:list  
sudo dokku redis:import <service> < backup_file.dump  

Example (connected to Catena EC2 instance through AWS console):

aws s3 cp s3://catena-backup/data.dump /home/ubuntu/data.dump  
sudo dokku redis:list  
sudo dokku redis:import catena-redis < data.dump