Rodrigo Rosenfeld Rosas
A sample Ruby script to achieve fast incremental back-up on btrfs partition
For some years I have been using rsnapshot to back up our databases and documents using an incremental approach. We create a new back-up every hour and retain the last 24 hours backup, one back-up per day for the past 7 days and one back-up per week for the past 4 weeks.
Rsnapshot is great. It uses hard-links to achieve incremental back-up, saving up a lot of space. It's a combination of "cp -al" and rsync. But we were facing a problem related to free inodes count on our ext4 partition. By the way, NewRelic does not monitor the free inodes count (df -i) so I found this problem the hard way, after the back-up stopped working due to lack of free inodes.
I've created a custom check in our own monitoring system to alert about low free inodes available and then I tried to tweak some ext4 settings to avoid this problem again in the new partition. We have 26GB spread on 2.6 million of individually gzipped documents (they are served directly by nginx) which will create almost 100 million hard-links in that back-up partition. There are hardlinks around the original documents as well as part of a smart strategy to save space when the same document is used in multiple transactions (they are not changed). Otherwise they would take some extra Gigabytes.
Recently, my custom monitoring system sent me an alert that 75% of the inodes were used while about only 30% of disk space was being actually used. So, I decided to investigate a bit more about other filesystems which dealt with inodes dynamically.
The btrfs filesystem
That's how I found btrfs, a modern file-system which not only does not have a limit on inodes but, as I'll describe, has some very interesting features for dealing with incremental back-up in a faster and better way than rsnapshot.
Initially I wasn't thinking about replacing rsnapshot, but after reading about support for subvolumes and snapshots in btrfs I changed my mind and decided to replace rsnapshot with a custom script. I've tried to adapt rsnapshot for several hours to make the workflow I wanted work without success though. Here's an issue related to btrfs support.
Before I talk about how btrfs helps our back-up system, let me explain a few issues I had with rsnapshot.
Rsnapshot issues
I've been living with some issues with rsnapshot in the past years. I want the full back-up procedure to take less than an hour so that we would be able to run it every hour. I had to tweak its settings a few times in order to get the script to finish in less than an hour but in the past days it was taking already almost 40 minutes to complete. A while back, before the tweaks, I had to change the interval to back-up every two hours.
One of the slow parts of rsnapshot is removing the last back-up snapshot when rotating. It doesn't matter if you use "rm -rf" or whatever other method. Removing a big tree of files is slow. An alternative would be to move the latest snapshot to the first one (hourly.0), since this would save the "rm -rf" time and also the "cp -al" time, skipping to the rsync phase. But I wasn't able to figure out how to make that happens with rsnapshot.
Also, some of the procedures could be done in parallel to speed up the process but rsnapshot doesn't provide direct support to specify this and it's hard to write proper shell script to manage those cases.
The goal
After reading about btrfs I figured out that the back-up procedure could be made much faster and be simplified. Then I created a Ruby script, which I'll show in the next section, and integrated it in our automation tools in one day. I've replaced rsnapshot with it in our back-up server, with the new script and it's running pretty well for the last two days taking about 8 minutes to complete the procedure on each run.
So, let me explain the strategy I wanted to implement to help you understanding the script.
As I said, btrfs supports subvolumes. Btrfs implements copy-on-write (CoW), so basically, this allows to both create and delete snapshots from subvolumes instantly (constant time). That means we replace the slow "rm -rf hourly.23" with the instantaneous "btrfs subvolume delete hourly.23" and "cp -al ..." with the instantaneous "btrfs subvolume snapshot ...".
In order for a regular user to delete subvolumes with btrfs, the user_subvol_rm_allowed fs option must be used. Also, deleting a subvolume doesn't work if there are other subvolumes inside it, so they must be removed first. There's no switch or tool in the btrfs-progs package that allows you to delete them recursively. This is important to understand the script.
Our back-up procedure consists of getting a recent dump of two production PostgreSQL databases (the main database and the one used by Redmine) and syncing two directories containing files (the main application files and the files uploaded to Redmine).
The idea is to get them inside a static path as the first step. The main reason for that is that if something goes wrong in the process after syncing the documents (the slowest part), for example, we wouldn't lose the transferred files the next time we try to run the script. So, basically here's how I implemented it (there's a simpler strategy I'll explain next):
- /var/backups/latest [regular directory]
- /var/backups/latest/postgres [subvolume] - the main db dump is stored here
- /var/backups/latest/tickets-db [subvolume] - the tickets db dump is stored here
- /var/backups/latest/docmanager [subvolume] - the 2.6 million documents are rsynced here
- /var/backups/latest/tickets-files [subvolume] - Redmine files go here
After the procedure is finished to get them in the latest state it creates a tmp directory and create a snapshot for each subvolume inside tmp and once everything works fine the back-ups are rotated and tmp is moved to hourly.0. Removing hourly.23 in the rotation phase has to remove the inner subvolumes first.
After implementing this (it was an iterative process) I realized it could be simplified to use a simpler infra-structure. "latest" would be a subvolume and everything inside it regular files and directories. Than the "tmp" directory wouldn't be used and after rotating a snapshot of "latest" would be used to create "hourly.0". I didn't update the script yet because I'm not sure if it worths changing, since the current layout is more modular, which is useful in case I want to take some snapshot of just part of the back-up for some reason. So the sample back-up script in the next section will use my current tested approach, which is the situation described first above.
The main database has over 500MB in PostgreSQL custom format, and it's much faster to rsync it than using scp. Initially those databases were not stored in the "latest" diretory and I used "scp" to copy them directly to the "tmp" directory, but I changed the strategy to save some time and bandwidth.
The script should exit with a message and non zero exit status code when something fails so that I would be notified if anything goes wrong by Cron (by setting the MAILTO=my@email.com in the beggining of the crontab file). It shouldn't affect the existing valid snapshots either in that case.
It shouldn't run in case the previous procedure hasn't finish, so there's a simple lock mechanism preventing that from happen in case it takes over an hour to complete. The second attempt will fail and I should get an e-mail telling me that happened.
It should also have a dry-run mode (which I call test mode) that will output the commands without running it, which is useful while designing the back-up steps. It should also allow for commands to run concurrently so it uses some indentation to show the order the commands are run.
Finally, it will report in the logs the issued commands and their status (finished or failed) as well as any commands output (STDOUT or STDERR) and the time each command took as well as the total time in the end of the procedure.
Finally, now that you understand what the script is supposed to do, here's the actual implementation.
The script
| 1 | #!/usr/bin/env ruby |
| 2 | |
| 3 | require 'open3' |
| 4 | require 'thread' |
| 5 | require 'logger' |
| 6 | require 'time' |
| 7 | |
| 8 | class Backup |
| 9 | def run(args) |
| 10 | @start_time = Time.now |
| 11 | @backup_root_path = File.expand_path '/var/backups' |
| 12 | #@backup_root_path = File.expand_path '~/backups' |
| 13 | @log_path = "#{@backup_root_path}/backup.log" |
| 14 | @tmp_path = "#{@backup_root_path}/tmp" |
| 15 | |
| 16 | @exiting = false |
| 17 | Thread.current[:indenting_level] = 0 |
| 18 | |
| 19 | setup_logger |
| 20 | |
| 21 | lock_or_exit |
| 22 | |
| 23 | log 'Starting back-up procedure' |
| 24 | |
| 25 | parse_args args.clone |
| 26 | |
| 27 | run_scripts if @action == 'hourly' |
| 28 | |
| 29 | rotate |
| 30 | unlock |
| 31 | report_completed |
| 32 | end |
| 33 | |
| 34 | private |
| 35 | |
| 36 | def setup_logger |
| 37 | File.write @log_path, '' unless File.exist? @log_path |
| 38 | logfile = File.open(@log_path, File::WRONLY | File::APPEND) |
| 39 | logfile.sync = true |
| 40 | @logger = Logger.new logfile |
| 41 | @logger.level = Logger::INFO |
| 42 | @logger.datetime_format = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' |
| 43 | @logger_mutex = Mutex.new |
| 44 | end |
| 45 | |
| 46 | def lock_or_exit |
| 47 | if File.exist?(pidfile) && run_command("kill -0 #{pid = File.read pidfile}") |
| 48 | abort "There's another backup in progress. Pid: #{pid} (from #{pidfile})." |
| 49 | end |
| 50 | File.write pidfile, Process.pid |
| 51 | end |
| 52 | |
| 53 | def unlock |
| 54 | File.unlink pidfile |
| 55 | end |
| 56 | |
| 57 | def pidfile |
| 58 | @pidfile ||= "#{@backup_root_path}/backup.pid" |
| 59 | end |
| 60 | |
| 61 | def run_command!(cmd, sucess_in_test_mode = true, abort_on_stderr: false) |
| 62 | run_command cmd, sucess_in_test_mode, abort_on_stderr: abort_on_stderr, abort_on_error: true |
| 63 | end |
| 64 | |
| 65 | def run_command(cmd, sucess_in_test_mode = true, abort_on_stderr: false, abort_on_error: false) |
| 66 | indented_cmd = ' ' * indenting_level + cmd |
| 67 | Thread.current[:indenting_level] += 1 |
| 68 | if @test_mode |
| 69 | @logger_mutex.synchronize{ puts indented_cmd} |
| 70 | return sucess_in_test_mode |
| 71 | end |
| 72 | start = Time.now |
| 73 | log "started: '#{indented_cmd}'" |
| 74 | stdout, stderr, status = Open3.capture3 cmd |
| 75 | stdout = stdout.chomp |
| 76 | stderr = stderr.chomp |
| 77 | success = status == 0 |
| 78 | log stdout unless stdout.empty? |
| 79 | log stderr, :warn unless stderr.empty? |
| 80 | if (!success && abort_on_error) || (abort_on_stderr && !stderr.empty?) |
| 81 | die "'#{cmd}' failed to run with exit status #{status}, aborting." |
| 82 | end |
| 83 | log "finished: '#{indented_cmd}' (#{success ? 'successful' : "failed with #{status}"}) " + |
| 84 | "[#{human_duration Time.now - start}]" |
| 85 | success |
| 86 | end |
| 87 | |
| 88 | def indenting_level |
| 89 | Thread.current[:indenting_level] |
| 90 | end |
| 91 | |
| 92 | def log(msg, level = :info) |
| 93 | return if @test_mode |
| 94 | @logger_mutex.synchronize{ @logger.send level, msg } |
| 95 | end |
| 96 | |
| 97 | VALID_OPTIONS = ['hourly', 'daily', 'weekly'].freeze |
| 98 | def parse_args(args) |
| 99 | args.shift if @test_mode = (args.first == 'test') |
| 100 | unless args.size == 1 && VALID_OPTIONS.include?(@action = args.first) |
| 101 | abort "Usage: 'backup [test] action', where action can be hourly, daily or weekly. |
| 102 | If test is specified the commands won't run but will be shown." |
| 103 | end |
| 104 | end |
| 105 | |
| 106 | def die(message) |
| 107 | log message, :fatal |
| 108 | was_exiting = @exiting |
| 109 | @exiting = true |
| 110 | delete_tmp_path_if_exists unless was_exiting |
| 111 | unlock |
| 112 | abort message |
| 113 | end |
| 114 | |
| 115 | def create_tmp_path |
| 116 | delete_tmp_path_if_exists |
| 117 | create_subvolume @tmp_path |
| 118 | end |
| 119 | |
| 120 | def create_subvolume(path, skip_if_exists = false) |
| 121 | return if skip_if_exists && File.exist?(path) |
| 122 | run_script %Q{btrfs subvolume create "#{path}"} |
| 123 | end |
| 124 | |
| 125 | def delete_tmp_path_if_exists |
| 126 | delete_subvolume_if_exists @tmp_path, delete_children: true |
| 127 | end |
| 128 | |
| 129 | def delete_subvolume_if_exists(path, delete_children: false) |
| 130 | return unless File.exist?(path) |
| 131 | Dir["#{path}/*"].each{|s| delete_subvolume_if_exists s } if delete_children |
| 132 | run_script %Q{btrfs subvolume delete -c "#{path}"} |
| 133 | end |
| 134 | |
| 135 | def run_script(script) |
| 136 | run_command! script |
| 137 | end |
| 138 | |
| 139 | def run_scripts(scripts = all_scripts) |
| 140 | case scripts |
| 141 | when Par |
| 142 | il = indenting_level |
| 143 | last_il = il |
| 144 | scripts.map do |s| |
| 145 | Thread.start do |
| 146 | Thread.current[:indenting_level] = il |
| 147 | run_scripts s |
| 148 | last_il = [Thread.current[:indenting_level], last_il].max |
| 149 | end |
| 150 | end.each &:join |
| 151 | Thread.current[:indenting_level] = last_il |
| 152 | when Array |
| 153 | scripts.each{|s| run_scripts s } |
| 154 | when String |
| 155 | run_script scripts |
| 156 | when Proc |
| 157 | scripts[] |
| 158 | else |
| 159 | die "Invalid script (#{scripts.class}): #{scripts}" |
| 160 | end |
| 161 | end |
| 162 | |
| 163 | Par = Class.new Array |
| 164 | def all_scripts |
| 165 | [ |
| 166 | Par[->{create_tmp_path}, "mkdir -p #{@backup_root_path}/latest", dump_main_db_on_d1, |
| 167 | dump_tickets_db_on_d1], |
| 168 | Par[local_docs_sync, local_tickets_files_sync, local_main_db_sync, local_tickets_db_sync], |
| 169 | Par[main_docs_script, tickets_files_script, main_db_script, tickets_db_script], |
| 170 | ] |
| 171 | end |
| 172 | |
| 173 | def dump_main_db_on_d1 |
| 174 | %q{ssh backup@backup-server.com "pg_dump -Fc -f /tmp/main_db.dump } + |
| 175 | %q{main_db_production"} |
| 176 | end |
| 177 | |
| 178 | def dump_tickets_db_on_d1 |
| 179 | %q{ssh backup@backup-server.com "pg_dump -Fc -f /tmp/tickets.dump redmine_production"} |
| 180 | end |
| 181 | |
| 182 | def local_docs_sync |
| 183 | [ |
| 184 | ->{ create_subvolume local_docmanager, true }, |
| 185 | "rsync -azHq --delete-excluded --delete --exclude doc --inplace " + |
| 186 | "backup@backup-server.com:/var/main-documents/production/docmanager/ " + |
| 187 | "#{local_docmanager}/", |
| 188 | ] |
| 189 | end |
| 190 | |
| 191 | def local_docmanager |
| 192 | @local_docmanager ||= "#{@backup_root_path}/latest/docmanager" |
| 193 | end |
| 194 | |
| 195 | def local_tickets_files_sync |
| 196 | [ |
| 197 | ->{ create_subvolume local_tickets_files, true }, |
| 198 | "rsync -azq --delete --inplace backup@backup-server.com:/var/redmine/files/ " + |
| 199 | "#{local_tickets_files}/", |
| 200 | ] |
| 201 | end |
| 202 | |
| 203 | def local_tickets_files |
| 204 | @local_tickets_files ||= "#{@backup_root_path}/latest/tickets-files" |
| 205 | end |
| 206 | |
| 207 | def local_main_db_sync |
| 208 | [ |
| 209 | ->{ create_subvolume local_main_db, true }, |
| 210 | "rsync -azq --inplace backup@backup-server.com:/tmp/main_db.dump " + |
| 211 | "#{local_main_db}/main_db.dump", |
| 212 | ] |
| 213 | end |
| 214 | |
| 215 | def local_main_db |
| 216 | @local_main_db ||= "#{@backup_root_path}/latest/postgres" |
| 217 | end |
| 218 | |
| 219 | def local_tickets_db_sync |
| 220 | [ |
| 221 | ->{ create_subvolume local_tickets_db, true }, |
| 222 | "rsync -azq --inplace backup@backup-server.com:/tmp/tickets.dump " + |
| 223 | "#{local_tickets_db}/tickets.dump", |
| 224 | ] |
| 225 | end |
| 226 | |
| 227 | def local_tickets_db |
| 228 | @local_tickets_db ||= "#{@backup_root_path}/latest/tickets-db" |
| 229 | end |
| 230 | |
| 231 | def main_docs_script |
| 232 | create_snapshot_cmd local_docmanager, "#{@tmp_path}/docmanager" |
| 233 | end |
| 234 | |
| 235 | def create_snapshot_cmd(from, to) |
| 236 | "btrfs subvolume snapshot #{from} #{to}" |
| 237 | end |
| 238 | |
| 239 | def main_db_script |
| 240 | create_snapshot_cmd local_main_db, "#{@tmp_path}/postgres" |
| 241 | end |
| 242 | |
| 243 | def tickets_db_script |
| 244 | create_snapshot_cmd local_tickets_db, "#{@tmp_path}/tickets-db" |
| 245 | end |
| 246 | |
| 247 | def tickets_files_script |
| 248 | create_snapshot_cmd local_tickets_files, "#{@tmp_path}/tickets-files" |
| 249 | end |
| 250 | |
| 251 | LAST_DIR_PER_TYPE = { |
| 252 | 'hourly' => 23, 'daily' => 6, 'weekly' => 3 |
| 253 | }.freeze |
| 254 | def rotate |
| 255 | last = LAST_DIR_PER_TYPE[@action] |
| 256 | path = ->(n, action = @action){ "#{@backup_root_path}/#{action}.#{n}" } |
| 257 | delete_subvolume_if_exists path[last], delete_children: true |
| 258 | n = last |
| 259 | while (n -= 1) >= 0 |
| 260 | run_script "mv #{path[n]} #{path[n+1]}" if File.exist?(path[n]) |
| 261 | end |
| 262 | dest = path[0] |
| 263 | case @action |
| 264 | when 'hourly' |
| 265 | run_script "mv #{@tmp_path} #{dest}" |
| 266 | when 'daily', 'weekly' |
| 267 | die 'last hourly back-up does not exist' unless File.exist?(hourly0 = path[0, 'hourly']) |
| 268 | create_tmp_path |
| 269 | Dir["#{hourly0}/*"].each do |subvolume| |
| 270 | run_script create_snapshot_cmd subvolume, "#{@tmp_path}/#{File.basename subvolume}" |
| 271 | end |
| 272 | run_script "mv #{@tmp_path} #{dest}" |
| 273 | end |
| 274 | end |
| 275 | |
| 276 | def report_completed |
| 277 | log "Backup finished in #{human_duration Time.now - @start_time}" |
| 278 | end |
| 279 | |
| 280 | def human_duration(total_time_sec) |
| 281 | n = total_time_sec.round |
| 282 | parts = [] |
| 283 | [60, 60, 24].each{|d| n, r = n.divmod d; parts << r; break if n.zero?} |
| 284 | parts << n unless n.zero? |
| 285 | pairs = parts.reverse.zip(%w(d h m s)[-parts.size..-1]) |
| 286 | pairs.pop if pairs.size > 2 # do not report seconds when irrelevant |
| 287 | pairs.flatten.join |
| 288 | end |
| 289 | end |
| 290 | |
| 291 | Backup.new.run(ARGV) if File.expand_path($PROGRAM_NAME) == File.expand_path(__FILE__) |
So, this is what I get running the test mode:
| 1 | $ ruby backup.rb test hourly |
| 2 | btrfs subvolume create "/home/rodrigo/backups/tmp" |
| 3 | mkdir -p /home/rodrigo/backups/latest |
| 4 | ssh backup@backup-server.com "pg_dump -Fc -f /tmp/main_db.dump main_db_production" |
| 5 | ssh backup@backup-server.com "pg_dump -Fc -f /tmp/tickets.dump redmine_production" |
| 6 | btrfs subvolume create "/home/rodrigo/backups/latest/docmanager" |
| 7 | btrfs subvolume create "/home/rodrigo/backups/latest/tickets-files" |
| 8 | btrfs subvolume create "/home/rodrigo/backups/latest/postgres" |
| 9 | btrfs subvolume create "/home/rodrigo/backups/latest/tickets-db" |
| 10 | rsync -azHq --delete-excluded --delete --exclude doc --inplace backup@backup-server.com:/var/main-documents/production/docmanager/ /home/rodrigo/backups/latest/docmanager/ |
| 11 | rsync -azq --delete --inplace backup@backup-server.com:/var/redmine/files/ /home/rodrigo/backups/latest/tickets-files/ |
| 12 | rsync -azq --inplace backup@backup-server.com:/tmp/main_db.dump /home/rodrigo/backups/latest/postgres/main_db.dump |
| 13 | rsync -azq --inplace backup@backup-server.com:/tmp/tickets.dump /home/rodrigo/backups/latest/tickets-db/tickets.dump |
| 14 | btrfs subvolume snapshot /home/rodrigo/backups/latest/tickets-db /home/rodrigo/backups/tmp/tickets-db |
| 15 | btrfs subvolume snapshot /home/rodrigo/backups/latest/tickets-files /home/rodrigo/backups/tmp/tickets-files |
| 16 | btrfs subvolume snapshot /home/rodrigo/backups/latest/postgres /home/rodrigo/backups/tmp/postgres |
| 17 | btrfs subvolume snapshot /home/rodrigo/backups/latest/docmanager /home/rodrigo/backups/tmp/docmanager |
| 18 | mv /home/rodrigo/backups/tmp /home/rodrigo/backups/hourly.0 |
The "all_scripts" method is the one you should adapt for your needs.
Final notes
I hope that script will help you serving as a base for your own back-up script in Ruby in case I was able to convince you to give this strategy a try. Unless you are already using some robust back-up solution such as Bacula or other advanced systems, this strategy is very simple to implement, takes little space and allows for fast incremental backups and might interest you.
Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section or if you'd suggest any improvements over it. Or if you think you've found a bug I'd love to hear about it.
Good luck dealing with your back-ups. :)