Backups and disaster recovery

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

When you decide to start using Docker Universal Control Plane on a production setting, you should configure it for high availability.

The next step is creating a backup policy and disaster recovery plan.

Backup policy

As part of your backup policy you should regularly create backups of UCP.

To create a UCP backup, you can run the docker/ucp:2.1.8 backup command on a single UCP manager. This command creates a tar archive with the contents of all the volumes used by UCP to persist data and streams it to stdout.

You only need to run the backup command on a single UCP manager node. Since UCP stores the same data on all manager nodes, you only need to take periodic backups of a single manager node.

To create a consistent backup, the backup command temporarily stops the UCP containers running on the node where the backup is being performed. User resources, such as services, containers, and stacks are not affected by this operation and will continue operating as expected. Any long-lasting exec, logs, events or attach operations on the affected manager node will be disconnected.

Additionally, if UCP is not configured for high availability, you will be temporarily unable to:

  • Log in to the UCP Web UI
  • Perform CLI operations using existing client bundles

To minimize the impact of the backup policy on your business, you should:

  • Configure UCP for high availability. This allows load-balancing user requests across multiple UCP manager nodes.
  • Schedule the backup to take place outside business hours.

Backup command

The example below shows how to create a backup of a UCP manager node and verify its contents:

# Create a backup and store it on /tmp/backup.tar
$ docker run --rm -i --name ucp \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  docker/ucp:2.1.8 backup --interactive > /tmp/backup.tar

# Ensure the backup is a valid tar and list its contents
# In a valid backup file, over 100 files should appear in the list
# and the `./ucp-node-certs/key.pem` file should be present
$ tar --list -f /tmp/backup.tar

A backup file may optionally be encrypted using a passphrase, as in the following example:

# Create a backup, encrypt it, and store it on /tmp/backup.tar
$ docker run --rm -i --name ucp \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  docker/ucp:2.1.8 backup --interactive \
  --passphrase "secret" > /tmp/backup.tar

# Decrypt the backup and list its contents
$ gpg --decrypt /tmp/backup.tar | tar --list

Restore your cluster

The restore command can be used to create a new UCP cluster from a backup file. When restoring, make sure you use the same version of the docker/ucp image that you’ve used to create the backup. After the restore operation is complete, the following data will be recovered from the backup file:

  • Users, teams, and permissions.
  • All UCP configuration options available under Admin Settings, such as the DDC subscription license, scheduling options, Content Trust and authentication backends.

There are two ways to restore a UCP cluster:

  • On a manager node of an existing swarm, which is not part of a UCP installation. In this case, a UCP cluster will be restored from the backup.
  • On a docker engine that is not participating in a swarm. In this case, a new swarm will be created and UCP will be restored on top.

To restore an existing UCP installation from a backup, you will need to first uninstall UCP from the cluster by using the uninstall-ucp command. Learn to uninstall a UCP cluster.

The example below shows how to restore a UCP cluster from an existing backup file, presumed to be located at /tmp/backup.tar:

$ docker run --rm -i --name ucp \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock  \
  docker/ucp:2.1.8 restore < /tmp/backup.tar

If the backup file is encrypted with a passphrase, you will need to provide the passphrase to the restore operation:

$ docker run --rm -i --name ucp \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock  \
  docker/ucp:2.1.8 restore --passphrase "secret" < /tmp/backup.tar

The restore command may also be invoked in interactive mode, in which case the backup file should be mounted to the container rather than streamed through stdin:

$ docker run --rm -i --name ucp \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v /tmp/backup.tar:/config/backup.tar \
  docker/ucp:2.1.8 restore -i

Disaster recovery

In the event where half or more manager nodes are lost and cannot be recovered to a healthy state, the system is considered to have lost quorum and can only be restored through the following disaster recovery procedure.

This procedure is not guaranteed to succeed with no loss of running services or configuration data. To properly protect against manager failures, the system should be configured for high availability.

  1. On one of the remaining manager nodes, perform docker swarm init --force-new-cluster. You may also need to specify an --advertise-addr parameter which is equivalent to the --host-address parameter of the docker/ucp install operation. This will instantiate a new single-manager swarm by recovering as much state as possible from the existing manager. This is a disruptive operation and existing tasks may be either terminated or suspended.
  2. Obtain a backup of one of the remaining manager nodes if one is not already available.
  3. If UCP is still installed on the cluster, uninstall UCP using the uninstall-ucp command.
  4. Perform a restore operation on the recovered swarm manager node.
  5. Log in to UCP and browse to the nodes page, or use the CLI docker node ls command.
  6. If any nodes are listed as down, you need to manually remove these nodes from the cluster and then re-join them using a docker swarm join operation with the cluster’s new join-token.

Where to go next

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