Creating Full Backups

Before you create a database backup, verify the following:

Run the vbr script from a terminal. Use the database administrator account from an initiator node in your database cluster.

Running vbr Without Optional Commands

You can run the vbr using only its required commands:

If your configuration file does not contain the database administrator password, vbr prompts you to enter the password. However, it does not display what you type.

The utility requires no further interaction after you invoke it.

To run the vbr utility:

Use the --task backup and --config-file filename directives as shown in this example:

[release@qco55srv01:/scratch_b/qa/vertica/QA/VT_Scenario 0]$ vbr -t backup --config $FULLBAK_CONFIG
Starting backup of database VTDB.
Participating nodes: v_vmart_node0001, v_vmart_node0002, v_vmart_node0003, v_vmart_node0004.
Snapshotting database.
Snapshot complete.
Approximate bytes to copy: 2315056043 of 2356089422 total.
[==================================================] 100%
Copying backup metadata.
Finalizing backup.
Backup complete! 

By default, no output appears, other than the progress bar. To include additional progress information, use the --debug option, with a value between 1–3.

If the utility does not locate the configuration you specify, it searches for one at opt/vertica/config/vbr.ini. If no file exists,the backup fails with an error.

Best Practices for Creating Backups

When creating backup configuration files:

The selected objects of a backup can include one or more schemas or tables, or a combination of both. For example, you can include schema S1 and tables T1 and T2 in an object-level backup. Multiple backups can be combined into a single backup. A schema-level backup can be integrated with a database backup (and a table backup integrated with a schema-level backup, and so on).

Incremental Backups

Each time you back up your database with the same configuration file, vbr creates an incremental backup. This incremental backup copies new storage containers, which can include:

You can configure the restorePointLimit parameter to increase the number of stored backups.

vbr Process for Deleting Backups

Running the vbr utility with the --task backup command deletes the oldest backup. This command run whenever the total number that exist exceeds the restorePointLimit value in the configuration file. Suppose the restorePointLimit = 5, and five archives exist. In this case, running the vbr --task backup utility again deletes the backup with the oldest date_timestamp, when vbr completes the current backup command.

When you invoke vbr to create a backup:

  1. The utility obtains the value of the restorePointLimit parameter value to determine how many backups should exist in the archive.
  2. If creating the next backup exceeds the restore point limit, vbr deletes the oldest archived backup.
  3. vbr continues processing and initially creates the backup on the database cluster.
  4. When the new backup is complete, vbr copies it from the database cluster to the designated backup location.
  5. After the new backup is successfully copied to the backup location, vbr removes the backup from the database cluster.

See Also

Related Terms

Related Tasks