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Back up and restore YugabyteDB Anywhere

Back up your YugabyteDB Anywhere installation

YugabyteDB Anywhere installations include configuration settings, certificates and keys, and other components required for creating and managing YugabyteDB universes.

If you aren't running high availability, use automated backups to take regularly scheduled backups of your YugabyteDB Anywhere installation for recovery in case of the loss of the node running your YugabyteDB Anywhere instance.

You can also perform ad hoc manual backups.

Set up automatic backups

Before you can set up automatic backups of YugabyteDB Anywhere, you need to configure a storage location for the backups.

Automatic backups do not include universe Prometheus data, but they do include locally stored YugabyteDB releases.

To configure automatic backups of your YugabyteDB Anywhere installation, do the following:

  1. Navigate to Admin>Platform HA and Backups and select Automated Platform Backups.

  2. Click Set up automated platform backups (or Edit if already configured).

  3. Select the storage configuration you want to use for the backup. For more information, see Configure backup storage.

  4. Enter a name for the folder where you want to store the backups.

    If you are backing up more than one YugabyteDB Anywhere instance to the same storage, provide a name that uniquely identifies the instance you are backing up. For example, yba_104.72.167.2_backups.

  5. Enter the backup frequency in minutes. 5 minutes works well for most purposes. More frequent backups provide more recovery points but may impact performance.

  6. Click Apply Changes.

Click Remove to disable periodic backups (this stops automatic backups but does not delete existing backup files).

Back up manually

You can manually back up your YugabyteDB Anywhere installation. Manual backups can include Prometheus data and YugabyteDB releases, in addition to your YugabyteDB Anywhere settings and metadata.

Manual backups are stored locally on the node that hosts your installation.

Perform a manual backup:

  • Before upgrading YugabyteDB Anywhere.
  • When migrating YugabyteDB Anywhere to a different host.
  • When you need to include Prometheus metrics data.
  • For ad-hoc backups outside your periodic backup schedule.

To create a one-time backup:

  1. Navigate to Admin>Platform HA and Backups and select Automated Platform Backups.

  2. Click One-Time Platform Export.

  3. Select the data you want to back up.

    • Platform Metadata: YugabyteDB Anywhere instance settings and metadata.
    • Local YugabyteDB Releases: YugabyteDB releases stored on universe nodes.
    • Universe Metrics (Prometheus Data): Prometheus metrics data for your universes.

  4. Specify the destination for the backup, as a full path. For example, /opt/yugabyte/yba_backups or /tmp/yba_export.

    Ensure the directory exists and the yugabyte user has write permissions for the location.

    The backup is saved as a .tar.gz file with a timestamped name.

  5. Click Export.

    You can monitor progress of the backup on the Tasks page.

Restore YugabyteDB Anywhere

When restoring YugabyteDB Anywhere (for example, after the loss of the node running YugabyteDB Anywhere):

  1. Create an fresh YugabyteDB Anywhere installation, either on the existing node after it is recovered, or on a new node.
  2. Using the new YugabyteDB Anywhere instance, restore from the most recent backup.

When doing a restore, YugabyteDB Anywhere performs the following checks:

  • Existing universes. By default, due to the possibility of data loss, you can only do a restore if your instance is not managing any universes. You can override this by setting the Allow YBA Restore With Universes Global Runtime Configuration option (config key yb.yba_backup.allow_restore_with_universes) to true.

  • The selected backup is not older than one day. By default you cannot restore from backups older than one day, as the backup may be inconsistent if you performed management operations after the backup was taken. You can override this by setting the Allow YBA Restore With Old Backup Global Runtime Configuration option (config key yb.yba_backup.allow_restore_with_old_backup) to true.

Refer to Manage runtime configuration settings. Note that only a Super Admin user can modify Global configuration settings.

Restore from automated backups

To restore a YugabyteDB Anywhere backup from external storage:

  1. If YugabyteDB Anywhere is not installed, install it.

  2. Navigate to Admin>Platform HA and Backups and select Automated Platform Backups.

  3. Click Advanced Restore.

    If YugabyteDB Anywhere detects existing universes, a warning is shown about potential data loss.

  4. Select Cloud Backup.

  5. Select the storage configuration for the backup you want to restore.

  6. Enter the name of the folder that you specified for the periodic backup you are restoring (for example, yba_104.72.167.2_backups).

  7. Click Restore.

YugabyteDB Anywhere restores the most recent backup and restarts automatically after the restore finishes.

Restore from a manual backup

To restore a YugabyteDB Anywhere backup from a manual backup:

  1. If YugabyteDB Anywhere is not installed, install it.

  2. Navigate to Admin>Platform HA and Backups and select Automated Platform Backups.

  3. Click Advanced Restore.

    If YugabyteDB Anywhere detects existing universes, a warning is shown about potential data loss.

  4. Select Local Backup.

  5. Enter the full file path to the backup file.

    For example, /opt/yba_backups/yba_backup_20240115_120000.tar.gz.

  6. Click Restore.

YugabyteDB Anywhere restores from the backup and restarts automatically after the restore finishes.