How to backup a Postgres database in Kubernetes on Google Cloud? - postgresql

Question

What is the best practice for backing up a Postgres database running on Google Cloud Container Engine?
My thought is working towards storing the backups in Google Cloud Storage, but I am unsure of how to connect the Disk/Pod to a Storage Bucket.
I am running Postgres in a Kubernetes cluster using the following configuration:
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: postgres-deployment
spec:
replicas: 1
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: postgres
spec:
containers:
- image: postgres:9.6.2-alpine
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
env:
- name: PGDATA
value: /var/lib/postgresql/data
- name: POSTGRES_DB
value: my-database-name
- name: POSTGRES_PASSWORD
value: my-password
- name: POSTGRES_USER
value: my-database-user
name: postgres-container
ports:
- containerPort: 5432
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /var/lib/postgresql
name: my-postgres-volume
volumes:
- gcePersistentDisk:
fsType: ext4
pdName: my-postgres-disk
name: my-postgres-volume
I have attempted to create a Job to run a backup:
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
name: postgres-dump-job
spec:
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: postgres-dump
spec:
containers:
- command:
- pg_dump
- my-database-name
# `env` value matches `env` from previous configuration.
image: postgres:9.6.2-alpine
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
name: my-postgres-dump-container
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /var/lib/postgresql
name: my-postgres-volume
readOnly: true
restartPolicy: Never
volumes:
- gcePersistentDisk:
fsType: ext4
pdName: my-postgres-disk
name: my-postgres-volume
(As far as I understand) this should run the pg_dump command and output the backup data to stdout (which should appear in the kubectl logs).
As an aside, when I inspect the Pods (with kubectl get pods), it shows the Pod never gets out of the "Pending" state, which I gather is due to there not being enough resources to start the Job.
Is it correct to run this process as a Job?
How do I connect the Job to Google Cloud Storage?
Or should I be doing something completely different?
I'm guessing it would be unwise to run pg_dump in the database Container (with kubectl exec) due to a performance hit, but maybe this is ok in a dev/staging server?

Answer 1

As #Marco Lamina said you can run pg_dump on postgres pod like
DUMP
// pod-name name of the postgres pod
// postgres-user database user that is able to access the database
// database-name name of the database
kubectl exec [pod-name] -- bash -c "pg_dump -U [postgres-user] [database-name]" > database.sql
RESTORE
// pod-name name of the postgres pod
// postgres-user database user that is able to access the database
// database-name name of the database
cat database.sql | kubectl exec -i [pod-name] -- psql -U [postgres-user] -d [database-name]
You can have a job pod that does run this command and exports this to a file storage system such as AWS s3.

Answer 2

I think running pg_dump as a job is a good idea, but connecting directly to your DB's persistent disk is not. Try having pg_dump connect to your DB over the network! You could then have a second disk onto which your pg_dump command dumps the backups. To be on the safe side, you can create regular snapshots of this second disk.

Answer 3

The reason for the Jobs POD to stay in Pending state is that it forever tries to attach/mount the GCE persistent disk and fails to do so because it is already attached/mounted to another POD.
Attaching a persistent disk to multiple PODs is only supported if all of them attach/mount the volume in ReadOnly mode. This is of course no viable solution for you.
I never worked with GCE, but it should be possible to easily create a snapshot from the PD from within GCE. This would not give a very clean backup, more like something in the state of "crashed in the middle, but recoverable", but this is probably acceptable for you.
Running pg_dump inside the database POD is a viable solution, with a few drawbacks as you already noticed, especially performance. You'd also have to move out the resulting backup from the POD afterwards, e.g. by using kubectl cp and another exec to cleanup the backup in the POD.

Answer 4

You can use Minio Client
First of all use simple dockerfile to make docker image contains postgres along with minio client (let name this image postgres_backup):
FROM postgres
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y wget
RUN wget https://dl.min.io/client/mc/release/linux-amd64/mc
RUN chmod +x mc
RUN ./mc alias set gcs https://storage.googleapis.com BKIKJAA5BMMU2RHO6IBB V8f1CwQqAcwo80UEIJEjc5gVQUSSx5ohQ9GSrr12
Now you can use postgres_backup image in your CronJob (I assumed you made backups bucket in your Google storage):
apiVersion: batch/v1beta1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
name: backup-job
spec:
# Backup the database every day at 2AM
schedule: "0 2 * * *"
jobTemplate:
spec:
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: postgres-backup
image: postgres_backup
env:
- name: POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD
value: trust
command: ["/bin/sh"]
args: ["-c", 'pg_dump -Fc -U [Your Postgres Username] -W [Your Postgres Password] -h [Your Postgres Host] [Your Postgres Database] | ./mc pipe gcs/backups/$(date -Iseconds).dump']
restartPolicy: Never

Answer 5

A lot of tutorials use kubectl cp or transfer the file inside the pod, but you can also pipe the pg_dump container output directly to another process.
kubectl run --env=PGPASSWORD=$PASSWORD --image=bitnami/postgresql postgresql -it --rm -- \
bash -c "pg_dump -U $USER -h $HOST -d $DATABASE" |\
gzip > backup.sql.gz

Answer 6

The easiest way to dump without storing any additional copies on your pod:
kubectl -n [namespace] exec -it [pod name] -- bash -c "export PGPASSWORD='[db password]'; pg_dump -U [db user] [db name]" > [database].sql