Scheduled backups for Cloud Databases

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Scheduled backups for Cloud Databases enable you to schedule periodic backups of your single instances, including replica sets and high availability (HA) instance groups.

You can schedule a backup of either the primary source or the replica of a replica set, but they act more like standalone instances. When you schedule a backup on an HA instance group, HA chooses the most up-to-date replica to run the backup.

When you schedule a backup, you can define the day of the week on which to perform a full backup on the selected instance type, and optionally specify the hour and minute when full and incremental backups are performed. By default, a random day of the week is generated.

The schedule runs every day at the assigned time, creating daily incremental backups, except for the specified day of the week when the full backup task is performed. All backups are stored in Cloud Files and are charged the standard Cloud Files storage fees.

This feature is supported for MySQL 5.6, Percona 5.6, and MariaDB 10 or later.

Features

Scheduled backups provide the following features:

• Incremental backups are performed daily, except for the day of the full backup.
• Automated backups for HA instance groups use the HA instance ID as a reference, and the backup process uses the most up-to-date replica node as a source.
• You define the number of full, automated backups to retain.
• You can run the backup process immediately through the client or the API by setting the run now option.

Pricing

Scheduled backups are priced the same as on-demand backups. They are charged based on the amount of storage used at the standard Cloud Files rates. For information on these rates, see Cloud Pricing. Charges are incurred as long as the backups exist. Even if you delete the instance, you might be charged for the backups if you don’t delete them individually.

Scheduling backups by using the Cloud Control Panel

You can enable, modify, and delete scheduled backups by using the Cloud Control Panel.

Create a backup schedule on an existing instance

Use the following steps to create a backup schedule on an existing instance:

1. Log in to the Cloud Control Panel.

2. In the top navigation bar, click Select a Product > Rackspace Cloud.

3. Select Databases > MySQL.

4. In the list of instances, click the gear icon next to the instance for which you want to create a schedule and select Schedule Backup.

5. In the pop-up dialog box that appears, select the day of the week for the full backup, specify a time of day to run the daily backups, and specify how many full backups to retain. If you do not specify a time, a random time is selected.

6. Click Create Schedule.

   A message appears at the bottom of the panel that says Created schedule for instanceName.

Create a backup schedule on a new instance

Use the following steps to create a backup schedule on a new instance:

Note: At this time, the ability to create a schedule during instance creation is only available on HA groups.

1. Log in to the Cloud Control Panel.

2. In the top navigation bar, click Select a Product > Rackspace Cloud.

3. Select Databases > MySQL.

4. Above the list of instances, select Create High Availability Group.

5. Under Settings, ensure that the box next to Protect your data with Daily Scheduled Backups is selected.

6. Click Specify Scheduled Backup Settings… to specify the exact time for the daily backups, the day of the week for the weekly full backup, and the number of weekly full backups to retain. If any of those values are not specified, they are selected randomly. Then, click Create Schedule.

7. After you’ve selected all of the other settings for the HA group, click Create HA Group.

View and modify a scheduled backup

Use the following steps to view and modify a scheduled backup:

1. Log in to the Cloud Control Panel.

2. In the top navigation bar, click Select a Product > Rackspace Cloud.

3. Select Databases > MySQL.

4. Click the name of the instance for which you want to view or modify a backup schedule.

   Note: On the instance Details page, the schedule appears next to Scheduled Backups.

5. To edit the schedule, click Edit.

Delete a scheduled backup

Use the following steps to delete a scheduled backup:

1. Log in to the Cloud Control Panel.

2. In the top navigation bar, click Select a Product > Rackspace Cloud.

3. Select Databases > MySQL.

4. Click the name of the instance for which you want to delete a backup schedule.

   On the instance Details page, the schedule is displayed next to Scheduled Backups.

5. To delete the schedule, click Delete.

Scheduling backups by using the API

You can enable, modify, and delete scheduled backups through the API by using the API operations that are described in the Cloud Databases API Reference.

The following table provides a brief overview of the scheduled backup API operations:

Name	Method	URI	Description
Create scheduled backup	POST	/{version}/{accountId}/schedules	Creates a schedule for running a backup periodically for a single instance or an HA group.
List scheduled backups	GET	/{version}/{accountId}/schedules	Lists all of the scheduled backups for the specified account.
Show scheduled backup details	GET	/{version}/{accountId}/schedules/{scheduleId}	Shows the details for the specified scheduled backup.
Update scheduled backup	PUT	/{version}/{accountId}/schedules/{scheduleId}	Updates the specified scheduled backup.
Delete scheduled backup	DELETE	/{version}/{accountId}/schedules/{scheduleId}	Deletes the specified scheduled backup.

The following table lists the required and optional attributes for these operations:

Attribute name	Description	Required?
action	The scheduled action: backup.	Yes
day_of_week	The day of the week. Sunday is 0.	Yes
hour	The hour of the day. Midnight is 0.	Yes
minute	The minute of the hour.	Yes
instance_id	The ID of the database instance to back up.	Yes
source_id	The ID of the database instance or HA group to back up.	No
source_type	The type of backup for the given source_id. (instance or ha. Defaults to instance.)	No
full_backup_retention	The number of full automated backups to keep.	No

Note: The instance_id field is deprecated. You can still use this field when you are providing a single instance ID to create a schedule. HA instance schedules should provide the source_id with the source_type set to ha.

The day_of_week attribute specifies the day on which a full backup is made. After that day, the schedule automatically runs daily incremental backups until the next full backup. If the day_of_week attribute is not provided, a random day of the week is assigned to the schedule.

The hour and minute attributes specify the time when the backup job runs. If either of these values isn’t specified, a random time is assigned to the schedule.

The time zone that the schedule backup service uses is UTC.

Currently only one schedule can be active per instance. If an instance already has a schedule enabled, a subsequent API call to create a schedule for that instance causes an error with the message yourInstanceId already has an active schedule.

Managing and restoring scheduled backups

You can manage and restore scheduled backups in the same manner as on-demand backups. For details, see Managing backups for Cloud Databases.

Backup retention policy

By default, the automated backup retention policy is set to two full backups. When the third full automated backup is performed, the oldest full automated backup and its child incremental backups are deleted. You can define your own retention policy when you create a new schedule or update an existing schedule by setting the allowed minimum retention value to 2. There is no limit on the number of full backups that you may retain.

If the instance that is associated with a backup is deleted, the backups remain until you manually delete them. Note that backups continue to be charged for the Cloud Files storage that they use as long as they exist.

HA automated backups

For HA groups, the backup schedule applies to the entire HA group and backups are performed against the most up-to-date replica. If a replica set setup is converted to an HA group and either the primary or replica nodes have scheduled backups enabled, the resulting HA group also has a schedule enabled with the same time settings as the primary or first replica node’s schedule. The individual schedules for the primary and replica nodes themselves are then deleted.

Limitations

Backups for Cloud Databases have the following limitations:

• Backup schedules cannot be directly assigned to instances that are part of an HA group. They must be applied to the universally unique identifier (UUID) for the HA group instead.
• Only one backup schedule is allowed per instance, replica set, or HA group.

Related articles

• Managing backups for Cloud Databases