Documentation on kubernetes backup/restore

I’m wondering if there is any documentation on proper backup/restore procedures for Mender with a Kubernetes deployment. I’m especially curious about partial restores, for example just the user related info like admins.

It would be great to have a playbook of some sort to reference though, as going through updates & migrations suggests creating backups but leaves it at that.

Hi @akin ,
Mender data is stored in MongoDB and the Artifacts Storage only (Minio, Amazon S3…). So as far as you have backup/restore procedures in place for these two services, you’re ready to go. The Mender Kubernetes deployment is stateless, so you can restore it simply by reinstalling Mender and pointing to the MongoDB cluster and the Artifacts Storage.

I agree that this could be better documented in the docs site, thanks for bringing this to attention.

Thanks for the response! I’m having a few issues with the restore so far.

I am going through the process of migrating from 3.6.2 to 3.7.3, so I am trying out the process in a staging environment. We are seeing a problem where the version information is no longer being displayed in the frontend, as seen in below image.
image

So I am trying a “fresh” install and a restore. The restore process went mostly fine, except the Release page is now empty. We’re saving our artifacts in an S3 bucket, and Mender is pointed at that the same as before, but they are not loading. I tried uploading a test artifact and was successful, and I see it in the s3 bucket, so it seems like the prior ones are just not loading.

Additionally, the fresh install did not fix the issue with the missing version information. So I’m a bit stuck now, with no artifacts and no versions. Any advice?

I’ll double check the version information in the UI, but this could be just a UI issue, you can ignore this, will be fixed in the following releases.

Please note that a fresh install and a restore only works with the restore from the same version. If you have a MongoDB backup from the 3.6.2 version, this could work with the 3.6.2 version only; let’s say you want to rollback a failed Mender upgrade: you have a backup for the 3.6.2 you made before the upgrade; now you have to tear down the failing Mender 3.7.3, then restore the MongoDB backup, then reinstall the Mender 3.6.2.

Same if you’re trying to run Mender 3.6.2 with a MongoDB restore made from the failing 3.7.3 update that you tried.