fs

Documentation

Overview

The `fs` plugin for SHIELD implements generic backup + restore functionality for filesystem based backups. It can be used against any server that has files that should be backed up. It's not safe to use if those files are held open and constantly written to by a service (like a database), since there is no coordination made with anything that may have those files open.

PLUGIN FEATURES

This plugin implements functionality suitable for use with the following SHIELD Job components:

Target: yes
Store:  yes

PLUGIN CONFIGURATION

The endpoint configuration passed to this plugin is used to identify what files should be backed up from the local system. Your endpoint JSON should look something like this:

{
    "include":"glob-of-files-to-include", // optional
    "exclude":"glob-of-files-to-exclude", // optional
    "bsdtar":"path-to-bsdtar",            // optional
    "base_dir":"base-directory-to-backup"
}

Default Configuration

{
    "bsdtar": "/var/vcap/packages/bsdtar/bin/bsdtar"
}

BACKUP DETAILS

The `fs` plugin uses `bsdtar` to back up all files located in `base_dir` which match the `include` pattern, but do not match the `exclude` pattern. If no exclude pattern is supplied, no files are filtered out. If no `include` pattern is supplied, all files found are included. Following `bsdtar`'s logic, excludes take priority over includes.

RESTORE DETAILS

The `fs` plugin restores the data backed up with `bsdtar` on top of `base_directory`. It does not clean up the directory first, so any files that exist on the FS, but are not in the restored archive will not be removed.

DEPENDENCIES

This plugin relies on the `bsdtar` utility. Please ensure that it is present on the system that will be running the backups + restores. If you are using shield-boshrelease, this is provided automatically for you as part of the `shield-agent` job template.