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Use backup command to create rotating backups of virtual machines on 3Engines Cloud cloud🔗
Rotating backups in OpenStack refer to a backup strategy where older backups are automatically deleted after a predefined number of backups are created. This ensures that storage does not grow indefinitely while still maintaining a set number of recent backups for disaster recovery.
The rotating backup algorithm🔗
Creating rotating backups of virtual machines is a process comprising of the following steps:
- Define the period of backups
- Usually, daily, weekly, monthly or in any other time period.
- Define rotation limit
- How many backups to retain (we will refer to this number as maxN throughout this article).
- Delete older backups
- Once the limit is reached, start deleting the existing backups, usually the oldest one.
backup create vs. image create🔗
There are two ways of creating backups under OpenStack, using one of these two commands:
openstack server backup create and openstack server image create
Here is how they compare:
Table 3 Comparison of Backup and Image Creation Commands🔗
| Feature | openstack server backup create |
openstack server image create |
|---|---|---|
| Association with VM | Associated using backup image property | Associated using backup name |
| Rotation support | Rotation with --backup-type and incremental backups |
No built-in rotation support |
| Classification in Horizon | Marked as image | Marked as snapshot |
| Horizon Select Boot Source | Choose Instance Snapshot | Choose Image |
| Purpose | Primarily used for backups, can be rotated and managed | Creates a single VM snapshot without rotation |
| Incremental backup support | Yes, supports incremental backups | No, always creates a full snapshot |
| Multiple rotating schedules | No, only one | Yes (daily, weekly, monthly etc.) |
| Best usage scenario | Automated backup strategies with rotation | Capturing the current state of a VM for cloning or rollback |
| Can be scripted? | Yes | Yes |
In this article we are going to use a openstack server backup create command under OpenStack to create rotating backups of virtual machines.
Prerequisites🔗
No. 1 Account
You need a 3Engines Cloud hosting account with access to the Horizon interface: https://horizon.3Engines.com
No. 2 VM which will be backed up
You need a virtual machine which will be backed up. If you don’t have one, you can create it by following one of these articles: