title	summary	category
Back up TiDB Cluster Data to AWS S3 using BR	Learn how to back up data to AWS S3 using BR.	how-to

Back up TiDB Cluster Data to AWS S3 using BR

This document describes how to back up the data of a TiDB cluster in AWS Kubernetes to the AWS storage using Helm charts. "Backup" in this document refers to full backup (ad-hoc full backup and scheduled full backup). BR is used to get the logic backup of the TiDB cluster, and then this backup data is sent to the AWS storage.

The backup method described in this document is implemented using Custom Resource Definition (CRD) in TiDB Operator v1.1 or later versions.

Three methods to grant AWS account permissions

In the AWS cloud environment, different types of Kubernetes clusters provide different methods to grant AWS account permissions. This document describes the following three methods:

Import the AccessKey and SecretKey of the AWS account:
- The AWS client supports reading AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY in the process environment variables to get the permissions of the associated user or role.
Associate IAM with the Pod:
- By associating the IAM role of the user with the running Pod resources, the process that runs in a Pod gets the permissions owned by the role.
- This authorization method is provided by kube2iam.
Note:
- When you use this method, refer to kube2iam Usage for instructions on how to create the kube2iam environment in the Kubernetes cluster, and then deploy TiDB Operator and the TiDB cluster.
- This method does not apply to hostNetwork. Make sure that the spec.tikv.hostNetwork parameter is set to false.
Associate IAM with ServiceAccount:
- By Associating the IAM role of the user with the serviceAccount resources in Kubernetes, the Pods of this ServiceAccount get the permissions owned by the role.
- This method is provided by EKS Pod Identity Webhook.
Note:

When you use this method, refer to AWS Documentation for instructions on how to create a EKS cluster, and then deploy TiDB Operator and the TiDB cluster.

Ad-hoc full backup

Ad-hoc full backup describes the backup by creating a Backup Custom Resource (CR) object. TiDB Operator performs the specific backup operation based on this Backup object. If an error occurs during the backup process, TiDB Operator does not retry, and you need to handle this error manually.

Currently, the above three authorization methods are supported for the ad-hoc full backup. This document provides examples in which the data of the demo1 TiDB cluster in the test1 Kubernetes namespace is backed up to AWS storage and all the above methods are used in the examples.

Prerequisites for ad-hoc full backup

Before you perform ad-hoc full backup, AWS account permissions need to be granted. This section describes three methods to grant AWS account permissions.

Grant permissions by importing AccessKey and SecretKey

Download backup-rbac.yaml, and execute the following command to create the role-based access control (RBAC) resources in the test1 namespace:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl apply -f backup-rbac.yaml -n test1
```
Create the s3-secret secret which stores the credential used to access the S3-compatible storage:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl create secret generic s3-secret --from-literal=access_key=xxx --from-literal=secret_key=yyy --namespace=test1
```
Create the backup-demo1-tidb-secret secret which stores the account and password needed to access the TiDB cluster:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl create secret generic backup-demo1-tidb-secret --from-literal=password=<password> --namespace=test1
```

Grant permissions by associating IAM with Pod

Download backup-rbac.yaml, and execute the following command to create the role-based access control (RBAC) resources in the test1 namespace:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl apply -f backup-rbac.yaml -n test1
```
Create the backup-demo1-tidb-secret secret which stores the account and password needed to access the TiDB cluster:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl create secret generic backup-demo1-tidb-secret --from-literal=password=<password> --namespace=test1
```
Create the IAM role:
- To create an IAM role for the account, refer to Create an IAM User.
- Give the required permission to the IAM role you have created. Refer to Adding and Removing IAM Identity Permissions for details. Because Backup needs to access the AWS S3 storage, IAM is granted the AmazonS3FullAccess permission.
Associate IAM with TiKV Pod:
- In the backup process using BR, both the TiKV Pod and the BR Pod need to perform read and write operations on the S3 storage. Therefore, you need to add the annotation to the TiKV Pod to associate the Pod with the IAM role:
  
  {{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl edit tc demo1 -n test1
```
- Find spec.tikv.annotations, append the iam.amazonaws.com/role: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/user annotation, and then exit. After the TiKV Pod is restarted, check whether the annotation is added to the TiKV Pod.
Note:

arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/user is the IAM role created in Step 4.

Grant permissions by associating IAM with ServiceAccount

Download backup-rbac.yaml, and execute the following command to create the role-based access control (RBAC) resources in the test1 namespace:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl apply -f backup-rbac.yaml -n test2
```
Create the backup-demo1-tidb-secret secret which stores the account and password needed to access the TiDB cluster:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl create secret generic backup-demo1-tidb-secret --from-literal=password=<password> --namespace=test1
```
Enable the IAM role for the service account on the cluster:
- To enable the IAM role on your EKS cluster, refer to Amazon EKS Documentation.
Create the IAM role:
- Create an IAM role and give the AmazonS3FullAccess permission to the role. Modify Trust relationships of the role. For details, refer to Creating an IAM Role and Policy.

Associate IAM with the ServiceAccount resources:

kubectl annotate sa tidb-backup-manager -n eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn=arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/user --namespace=test1

Bind ServiceAccount to TiKV Pod:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl edit tc demo1 -n test1
```
Modify the value of spec.tikv.serviceAccount to tidb-backup-manager. After the TiKV Pod is restarted, check whether the serviceAccountName of the TiKV Pod has changed.

Note:

arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/user is the IAM role created in Step 4.

Process of ad-hoc full backup

If you grant permissions by importing AccessKey and SecretKey, create the Backup CR, and back up cluster data as described below:

kubectl apply -f backup-aws-s3.yaml

The content of backup-aws-s3.yaml is as follows:

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-s3
  namespace: test1
spec:
  backupType: full
  br:
    cluster: demo1
    clusterNamespace: test1
    # logLevel: info
    # statusAddr: <status-addr>
    # concurrency: 4
    # rateLimit: 0
    # timeAgo: <time>
    # checksum: true
    # sendCredToTikv: true
  from:
    host: <tidb-host-ip>
    port: <tidb-port>
    user: <tidb-user>
    secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
  s3:
    provider: aws
    secretName: s3-secret
    region: us-west-1
    bucket: my-bucket
    prefix: my-folder

If you grant permissions by associating IAM with Pod, create the Backup CR, and back up cluster data as described below:

kubectl apply -f backup-aws-s3.yaml

The content of backup-aws-s3.yaml is as follows:

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-s3
  namespace: test1
  annotations:
    iam.amazonaws.com/role: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/user
spec:
  backupType: full
  br:
    cluster: demo1
    sendCredToTikv: false
    clusterNamespace: test1
    # logLevel: info
    # statusAddr: <status-addr>
    # concurrency: 4
    # rateLimit: 0
    # timeAgo: <time>
    # checksum: true
  from:
    host: <tidb-host-ip>
    port: <tidb-port>
    user: <tidb-user>
    secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
  s3:
    provider: aws
    region: us-west-1
    bucket: my-bucket
    prefix: my-folder

If you grant permissions by associating IAM with ServiceAccount, create the Backup CR, and back up cluster data as described below:

kubectl apply -f backup-aws-s3.yaml

The content of backup-aws-s3.yaml is as follows:

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-s3
  namespace: test1
spec:
  backupType: full
  serviceAccount: tidb-backup-manager
  br:
    cluster: demo1
    sendCredToTikv: false
    clusterNamespace: test1
    # logLevel: info
    # statusAddr: <status-addr>
    # concurrency: 4
    # rateLimit: 0
    # timeAgo: <time>
    # checksum: true
  from:
    host: <tidb-host-ip>
    port: <tidb-port>
    user: <tidb-user>
    secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
  s3:
    provider: aws
    region: us-west-1
    bucket: my-bucket
    prefix: my-folder

The above three examples uses three methods to grant permissions to back up data to Amazon S3 storage. The acl, endpoint, storageClass configuration items of Amazon S3 can be ignored.

Amazon S3 supports the following access-control list (ACL) policies:

private
public-read
public-read-write
authenticated-read
bucket-owner-read
bucket-owner-full-control

If the ACL policy is not configured, the private policy is used by default. For the detailed description of these access control policies, refer to AWS documentation.

Amazon S3 supports the following storageClass types:

STANDARD
REDUCED_REDUNDANCY
STANDARD_IA
ONEZONE_IA
GLACIER
DEEP_ARCHIVE

If storageClass is not configured, STANDARD_IA is used by default. For the detailed description of these storage types, refer to AWS documentation.

After creating the Backup CR, use the following command to check the backup status:

kubectl get bk -n test1 -o wide

More Backup CR fields are described as follows:

.spec.metadata.namespace: the namespace where the Backup CR is located.
.spec.from.host: the address of the TiDB cluster to be backed up.
.spec.from.port: the port of the TiDB cluster to be backed up.
.spec.from.user: the accessing user of the TiDB cluster to be backed up.
.spec.from.tidbSecretName: the secret of the user password of the .spec.from.user TiDB cluster.
.spec.from.tlsClient.tlsSecret: the secret of the certificate used during the backup.

If TLS is enabled for the TiDB cluster, but you do not want to back up data using the <cluster-name>-cluster-client-secret as described in Enable TLS between TiDB Components, you can use the .spec.from.tlsClient.tlsSecret parameter to specify a secret for the backup. To generate the secret, run the following command:

{{< copyable "shell-regular" >}}
```
kubectl create secret generic <secretName> --namespace=<namespace> --from-file=tls.crt=<path/to/tls.crt> --from-file=tls.key=<path/to/tls.key> --from-file=ca.crt=<path/to/ca.crt>
```

More S3-compatible providers are described as follows:

alibaba：Alibaba Cloud Object Storage System (OSS) formerly Aliyun
digitalocean：Digital Ocean Spaces
dreamhost：Dreamhost DreamObjects
ibmcos：IBM COS S3
minio：Minio Object Storage
netease：Netease Object Storage (NOS)
wasabi：Wasabi Object Storage
other：Any other S3 compatible provider

Scheduled full backup

You can set a backup policy to perform scheduled backups of the TiDB cluster, and set a backup retention policy to avoid excessive backup items. A scheduled full backup is described by a custom BackupSchedule CR object. A full backup is triggered at each backup time point. Its underlying implementation is the ad-hoc full backup.

Prerequisites for scheduled full backup

The prerequisites for the scheduled full backup is the same with the prerequisites for ad-hoc full backup.

Process of scheduled full backup

If you grant permissions by importing AccessKey and SecretKey, create the BackupSchedule CR, and back up cluster data as described below:

kubectl apply -f backup-scheduler-aws-s3.yaml

The content of backup-scheduler-aws-s3.yaml is as follows:

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: BackupSchedule
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-schedule-s3
  namespace: test1
spec:
  #maxBackups: 5
  #pause: true
  maxReservedTime: "3h"
  schedule: "*/2 * * * *"
  backupTemplate:
    backupType: full
    br:
      cluster: demo1
      clusterNamespace: test1
      # logLevel: info
      # statusAddr: <status-addr>
      # concurrency: 4
      # rateLimit: 0
      # timeAgo: <time>
      # checksum: true
      # sendCredToTikv: true
    from:
      host: <tidb-host-ip>
      port: <tidb-port>
      user: <tidb-user>
      secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
    s3:
      provider: aws
      secretName: s3-secret
      region: us-west-1
      bucket: my-bucket
      prefix: my-folder

If you grant permissions by associating IAM with the Pod, create the BackupSchedule CR, and back up cluster data as described below:

kubectl apply -f backup-scheduler-aws-s3.yaml

The content of backup-scheduler-aws-s3.yaml is as follows:

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: BackupSchedule
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-schedule-s3
  namespace: test1
  annotations:
    iam.amazonaws.com/role: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/user
spec:
  #maxBackups: 5
  #pause: true
  maxReservedTime: "3h"
  schedule: "*/2 * * * *"
  backupTemplate:
    backupType: full
    br:
      cluster: demo1
      sendCredToTikv: false
      clusterNamespace: test1
      # logLevel: info
      # statusAddr: <status-addr>
      # concurrency: 4
      # rateLimit: 0
      # timeAgo: <time>
      # checksum: true
    from:
      host: <tidb-host-ip>
      port: <tidb-port>
      user: <tidb-user>
      secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
    s3:
      provider: aws
      region: us-west-1
      bucket: my-bucket
      prefix: my-folder

If you grant permissions by associating IAM with ServiceAccount, create the BackupSchedule CR, and back up cluster data as described below:

kubectl apply -f backup-scheduler-aws-s3.yaml

The content of backup-scheduler-aws-s3.yaml is as follows:

---
apiVersion: pingcap.com/v1alpha1
kind: BackupSchedule
metadata:
  name: demo1-backup-schedule-s3
  namespace: test1
spec:
  #maxBackups: 5
  #pause: true
  maxReservedTime: "3h"
  schedule: "*/2 * * * *"
  serviceAccount: tidb-backup-manager
  backupTemplate:
    backupType: full
    br:
      cluster: demo1
      sendCredToTikv: false
      clusterNamespace: test1
      # logLevel: info
      # statusAddr: <status-addr>
      # concurrency: 4
      # rateLimit: 0
      # timeAgo: <time>
      # checksum: true
    from:
      host: <tidb-host-ip>
      port: <tidb-port>
      user: <tidb-user>
      secretName: backup-demo1-tidb-secret
    s3:
      provider: aws
      region: us-west-1
      bucket: my-bucket
      prefix: my-folder

After creating the scheduled full backup, use the following command to check the backup status:

kubectl get bks -n test1 -o wide

You can use the following command to check all the backup items:

kubectl get bk -l tidb.pingcap.com/backup-schedule=demo1-backup-schedule-s3 -n test1

From the above two examples, you can see that the backupSchedule configuration consists of two parts. One is the unique configuration of backupSchedule, and the other is backupTemplate.

backupTemple specifies the configuration related to the S3 storage, which is the same as the configuration of the ad-hoc full backup to S3 (refer to S3 backup process for details). The following are the unique configuration items of backupSchedule:

.spec.maxBackups: A backup retention policy, which determines the maximum number of backup items to be retained. When this value is exceeded, the outdated backup items will be deleted. If you set this configuration item to 0, all backup items are retained.
.spec.maxReservedTime: A backup retention policy based on time. For example, if you set the value of this configuration to 24h, only backup items within the recent 24 hours are retained. All backup items out of this time are deleted. For the time format, refer to func ParseDuration. If you have set the maximum number of backup items and the longest retention time of backup items at the same time, the latter setting takes effect.
.spec.schedule: The time scheduling format of Cron. Refer to Cron for details.
.spec.pause: false by default. If this parameter is set to true, the scheduled scheduling is paused. In this situation, the backup operation will not be performed even if the scheduling time is reached. During this pause, the backup Garbage Collection (GC) runs normally. If you change true to false, the full backup process is restarted.

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backup-to-aws-s3-using-br.md

backup-to-aws-s3-using-br.md

Back up TiDB Cluster Data to AWS S3 using BR

Three methods to grant AWS account permissions

Ad-hoc full backup

Prerequisites for ad-hoc full backup

Grant permissions by importing AccessKey and SecretKey

Grant permissions by associating IAM with Pod

Grant permissions by associating IAM with ServiceAccount

Process of ad-hoc full backup

Scheduled full backup

Prerequisites for scheduled full backup

Process of scheduled full backup

Files

backup-to-aws-s3-using-br.md

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backup-to-aws-s3-using-br.md

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Back up TiDB Cluster Data to AWS S3 using BR

Three methods to grant AWS account permissions

Ad-hoc full backup

Prerequisites for ad-hoc full backup

Grant permissions by importing AccessKey and SecretKey

Grant permissions by associating IAM with Pod

Grant permissions by associating IAM with ServiceAccount

Process of ad-hoc full backup

Scheduled full backup

Prerequisites for scheduled full backup

Process of scheduled full backup