Performing daily backups in a load balancer #

Backups are used to create copies of data or configurations for disaster recovery or to restore the system to a previous state in case of failures or data loss and there are scenarios where you might want to consider implementing regular backups or snapshots of your load balancer’s configuration and settings:

Configuration and Rule Management: Load balancers can have complex configurations and rules that govern how traffic is distributed. Regularly backing up these configurations can help you restore them in case they are accidentally modified or misconfigured.

Change Control and Auditing: Regular backups can serve as a change control mechanism. You can take a backup before making significant changes to the load balancer’s settings. This way, if something goes wrong during or after the change, you can easily revert to the previous known-good configuration.

Disaster Recovery: While load balancers are designed to provide high availability, they are not immune to failures. Having backups can be part of your disaster recovery plan, allowing you to rebuild or restore your load balancer configuration on a new device or in a different environment.

Security: Regular backups can also be a security measure. If your load balancer is compromised or misconfigured due to a security breach, you can restore it to a known secure state.

Documentation and Analysis: Backups can serve as a form of documentation, helping you understand how your load balancer was configured at different points in time. This can be useful for analysis, troubleshooting, or compliance purposes.

Historical Data: Backups can also help you keep historical records of your load balancer settings, which can be useful for tracking changes and trends over time.

Daily backups best practices #

When configuring daily backups for a load balancer, consider the following best practices:

1. Automate the backup process to ensure consistency and avoid human error.
2. Store backups securely and offsite to protect against on-site disasters.
3. Implement versioning or timestamping to differentiate between different backups.
4. Test the restoration process regularly to ensure that you can recover your load balancer’s configuration when needed.

The specific method for creating and managing backups will depend on the type of operation tasks you are using and the available features or tools it provides. Additionally, the frequency of backups (daily, weekly, etc.) should be determined based on your organization’s needs, the rate of configuration changes, and your disaster recovery requirements.

Configure daily backups in RELIANOID Load Balancer? #

With RELIANOID Load Balancer, you can run manual backups via command line using the following command:

root@noid-ee-01:~# /usr/local/relianoid/bin/zenbackup.pl NAME -c

Make sure to replace NAME with your preferred identifier. The generated backups will be stored in the directory at /usr/local/relianoid/backups/.

If you’d like to automate this process on a daily basis, you can achieve this by creating the following script file into the /etc/cron.daily/ directory and granting it execution permissions with the following commands:

root@noid-ee-01:~# nano /etc/cron.daily/backup

Then, copy the contents:

#!/bin/bash
NAME=`date "+%d%m%y"` && /usr/local/relianoid/bin/zenbackup.pl ${NAME} -c

Finally, apply the execution permissions:

root@noid-ee-01:~# chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/backup

This script, when executed daily, will create a backup file with the current date as its identifier into the directory /usr/local/relianoid/backups/.

root@noid-ee-01:~# ls /usr/local/relianoid/backups/
backup-011123.tar.gz
backup-021123.tar.gz
backup-031123.tar.gz

Please note that these backups are not freed or rotated, so please take into account to delete the old ones monthly.