Snapshots and backup management

You can back up and restore specific environments at any time using a snapshot. Snapshot options are available for all Starter environments and Pro Integration environments. The snapshot feature does not apply to the Pro Staging and Production environments.

The Pro Staging and Production environments receive regular backups for disaster recovery purposes by default, see Pro Backup & Disaster Recovery. However, these backups are not publicly accessible because they are stored in a separate system. You can open a ticket to request a backup with a specific date, time, and timezone. Then we can extract it from the external system and provide it to you.

A snapshot is a complete backup of an environment that includes all persistent data from all running services (for example, your MySQL database, Redis, and so on) and any files stored on the mounted volumes. Because an environment deploys as a read-only file system, restoring a snapshot is fast.

You have up to seven days to restore a snapshot.

Adobe provides two methods for creating and managing snapshots:

• Project Web Interface
• Cloud CLI

Create a snapshot

To create a snapshot using the Project Web Interface:

1. Log in to your project.
2. In the left pane, click the name of the environment to back up.
3. In the top pane, click the Snapshots icon.
4. Click Create.

To create a snapshot using the magento-cloud CLI:

1. Open a terminal and navigate to your project.

2. Check out the environment branch to snapshot.

3. Create the snapshot.

   magento-cloud snapshot:create
   Creating a snapshot of production
   Waiting for the snapshot to complete...
   

   The following modifiers further specify how to create the snapshot:

   -p, --project=PROJECT          The project ID
   -e, --environment=ENVIRONMENT  The environment ID
   

   For a full list of options, enter magento-cloud snapshot:create --help.

4. Verify the most recent snapshots.

   magento-cloud snapshots
   

   The list returns information about the snapshot status:

   Finding snapshots for the environment <environment_name>
   +---------------------------+--------------------+----------+----------+---------+
   | Created                   | Snapshot name      | Progress | State    | Result  |
   +---------------------------+--------------------+----------+----------+---------+
   | 2018-04-09T14:43:39-05:00 | <snapshot_ID>.     | 100%     | complete | success |
   +---------------------------+--------------------+----------+----------+---------+
   

Restore a snapshot

To restore a snapshot using the Project Web Interface:

1. Log in to your project.
2. In the left pane, click the name of the environment to restore.
3. In the environment messages, select snapshot from the all types of drop-down list.
4. Click restore next to the snapshot.
5. Review the Snapshot restore date and click Restore.

To restore a snapshot using the Cloud CLI:

1. Open a terminal and navigate to your project.

2. Check out the environment branch to restore.

3. List all available snapshots.

   magento-cloud snapshot:list
   

   The list returns information about the available snapshots:

   Finding snapshots for the environment <environment_name>
   +---------------------------+--------------------+----------+----------+---------+
   | Created                   | Snapshot name      | Progress | State    | Result  |
   +---------------------------+--------------------+----------+----------+---------+
   | 2018-04-09T14:43:39-05:00 | <snapshot_ID>.     | 100%     | complete | success |
   +---------------------------+--------------------+----------+----------+---------+
   

4. Restore a snapshot using the snapshot ID from the list.

   magento-cloud snapshot:restore <snapshot-id>
   

   The following modifiers further specify how to restore the snapshot:

   -p, --project=PROJECT          The project ID
   -e, --environment=ENVIRONMENT  The environment ID
   

Dump your database

You can create a copy of your database using the ece-tools db-dump command. By default, this command creates backups in the /app/var/dump-main directory for all database connections that are specified in the environment configuration. For example, if you configured your project to use split databases, the db-dump operation creates backups for each of the configured databases.

You can choose to back up selected databases by appending the database names to the command, for example:

php vendor/bin/ece-tools db-dump -- main sales

Consider the following guidelines:

• For Production environments, Adobe recommends completing database dump operations during off-peak hours to minimize service disruptions that occur when the site is in maintenance mode.
• The db-dump command creates an archive in your remote project directory called dump-<timestamp>.sql.gz.
• If an error occurs during the dump operation, the command deletes the dump file to conserve disk space. Review the logs for details (var/log/cloud.log).
• For Pro Production environments, this command dumps only from one of three high-availability nodes, so production data written to a different node during the dump might not be copied. The command generates a var/dbdump.lock file to prevent the command from running on more than one node.

For help, use: php vendor/bin/ece-tools db-dump --help

To create a database dump in the Staging or Production environment:

1. Use SSH to log in to the remote environment that contains the database to copy.

2. Create a backup of the database. To choose a target directory for the DB dump, use the --dump-directory option.

   php vendor/bin/ece-tools db-dump
   

   Sample response:

   The db-dump operation switches the site to maintenance mode, stops all active cron jobs and consumer queue processes, and disables cron jobs before starting the dump process.
   Your site will not receive any traffic until the operation completes.
   Do you wish to proceed with this process? (y/N)? y
   2020-01-28 16:38:08] INFO: Starting backup.
   [2020-01-28 16:38:08] NOTICE: Enabling Maintenance mode
   [2020-01-28 16:38:10] INFO: Trying to kill running cron jobs and consumers processes
   [2020-01-28 16:38:10] INFO: Running Magento cron and consumers processes were not found.
   [2020-01-28 16:38:10] INFO: Waiting for lock on db dump.
   [2020-01-28 16:38:10] INFO: Start creation DB dump for main database...
   [2020-01-28 16:38:10] INFO: Finished DB dump for main database, it can be found here: /tmp/qxmtlseakof6y/dump-main-1580229490.sql.gz
   [2020-01-28 16:38:10] INFO: Backup completed.
   [2020-01-28 16:38:11] NOTICE: Maintenance mode is disabled.
   

Rollbacks to remove code

Adobe recommends creating a snapshot of the environment and a backup of the database before deployments.

If you must restore a snapshot specifically to remove new code and added extensions, the process can be complicated depending on the number of changes and when you roll back. Some rollbacks might require database changes.

Specifically for code, you should investigate reverting code changes from your branch before redeploying. If not, every deploy pushes the master branch (code and extensions) to the target environment again. See the Deployment Process.

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