You can use the intermittent backup on large production environments with limited maintenance windows to investigate errors, recreate defects, or identify workflow problems in their working flows.
With intermittent back up you can run a background job on the Replica nodes. After the baseline is established, the scheduled backup jobs can run every hour to synchronize data with the Replica nodes. The subsequent backup jobs are faster because the delta changes are copied. When a maintenance window becomes available, stop the VMware Blockchain nodes and manually synchronize data to the backup directory. When the maintenance window ends, you can restart the VMware Blockchain.
Restore the backup data to a clone VMware Blockchain node on a separate server, and run analytics on the cloned VMware Blockchain node.
Note:
You must create unique backup directories for each Replica node so that the data is not overwritten by the backup job of another Replica node.
The intermittent backup process applies to Replica nodes only. Client node data is not backed up.
Procedure
- Configure SSH without password between the agent and backup server.
docker exec -ti agent bash
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "root" -N '' -f /root/.ssh/id_rsa
ssh-copy-id root@<backup_server>
- Run the intermittent backup API to schedule a backup job on each Replica node.
curl -vX POST localhost:8546/api/backup?action=schedule -H
"Content-Type:application/json" -d '{"backup_destination”: "10.72.216.118:/<backup_dir_name>",
"schedule_frequency": "HOURLY", "rsync_user_name": "root", "backup_time_zone": "time_zone"}'
The backup destination is the location of the backup directory. The backup server hosts the Replica node backups. The backup directory name is the source database directory. The default value is /config/concord/rocksdbdata. The rsync_user is the user name to log in to the backup server. The backup time zone is the time zone the customer uses.
- Stop all the applications that invoke connection requests to the DAML Ledger.
- Stop the Client node.
curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=stop
root@localhost [ ~ ]# curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=stop root@localhost [ ~ ]# docker ps -a CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 218a1bdaddd6 vmwaresaas.jfrog.io/vmwblockchain/operator:1.2.0.1.91 "/operator/operator_…" 18 hours ago Up 18 hours operator cd476a6b3d6c vmwaresaas.jfrog.io/vmwblockchain/agent:1.2.0.1.91 "java -jar node-agen…" 18 hours ago Up 18 hours 127.0.0.1:8546->8546/tcp agent root@localhost [ ~ ]#
- Repeat the stop operation on each Client node in the Client group.
- Verify that all the containers except for the
agent and deployed operator container are stopped.
docker ps -a
If the docker ps -a command shows that some containers, with the exception agent and deployed operator container, are still running, then rerun the command or use the docker stop <container_name> command to stop the containers.
- Verify that the following metrics indicate that your blockchain network is operating properly.
| Option |
Description |
| Metrics |
Description |
| Blocks per second metrics |
All the blockchain nodes must process blocks because time blocks are constantly being added. The nodes should be a positive number to be considered in a healthy state. |
| FastPaths |
All Replica nodes must report in a fast path, and none reporting in a slow path. When the Blocks per second metrics indicate an unhealthy state, the wedge status is always false until all the nodes have stopped at the same checkpoint. |
- Pause all the Replica nodes at the same checkpoint from the operator container and check the status periodically until all the Replica nodes' status is true.
Any blockchain node or nodes in state transfer or down for other reasons cause the wedge status command to return false. The wedge status command returns true when state transfer completes and all Replica nodes are healthy, allowing all Replica nodes to stop at the same checkpoint successfully.
Wedge command might take some time to complete. The metrics dashboards indicate nodes that have stopped processing blocks as they have been wedged. If you notice a false report in the dashboard, contact the VMware Blockchain support to diagnose the Replica nodes experiencing the problem.
docker exec -it operator sh -c './concop wedge stop' {"succ":true} docker exec -it operator sh -c './concop wedge status' {"192.168.100.107":true,"192.168.100.108":true,"192.168.100.109":true,"192.168.100.110":true}
- Stop the Replica node.
curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=stop
root@localhost [ ~ ]# curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=stop
root@localhost [ ~ ]# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
3b7135c677cf vmwaresaas.jfrog.io/vmwblockchain/agent:1.2.0.1.91 "java -jar node-agen…" 20 hours ago Up 20 hours 127.0.0.1:8546->8546/tcp agent
- Repeat the stop operation on each Replica node in the Replica Network.
- Verify that all the containers except for the
agent are stopped.
docker ps -a
If the docker ps -a command shows that some containers beside the agent are running, then rerun the command or use the docker stop <container_name> command to stop the containers.
- Check that all the Replica nodes are stopped in the same state.
Verifying that the LastReacheableBlockID and LastBlockID sequence number of each Replica node stopped helps determine if any nodes lag.
If there is a lag when you power on the Replica Network, some Replica nodes in the state-transfer mode might have to catch up. Otherwise, it can result in a failed consensus and require restoring each Replica node from the latest single copy.
docker run -it --rm --entrypoint="" --mount type=bind,source=/mnt/data/rocksdbdata,target=/concord/rocksdbdata <ImageName> /concord/kv_blockchain_db_editor /concord/rocksdbdata getLastBlockID
docker run -it --rm --entrypoint="" --mount type=bind,source=/mnt/data/rocksdbdata,target=/concord/rocksdbdata <image_name> /concord/kv_blockchain_db_editor /concord/rocksdbdata getLastReachableBlockID
The <image_name> is the Concord-core image name in the blockchain.
vmwaresaas.jfrog.io/vmwblockchain/concord-core:1.3.0.0.49
- Back up the data on each of the Client nodes.
tar cvzf <backup_name> /config/daml-ledger-api/environment-vars /config/daml-index-db/environment-vars /config/telegraf/telegraf.conf
#For data greater than 64GB
rsync -avh /mnt/data/db <destination_folder>
The <backup_name> must end in .tar.gz and this file can be located on the VM or externally mounted storage. For example, db-backup.tar.gz.
The rsync command might time out due to SSH inactivity, incrementally rerun the command.
- Run the backup job API to finish the daily backup.
curl -vX POST localhost:8546/api/backup?action=run_now -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d '{"backup_destination": "10.72.216.118:/backup_dir_name", "rsync_user_name": "root", "backup_time_zone": "time_zone"}'
- Start all the Replica nodes.
curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=start
- Start all the Client nodes.
curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:8546/api/node/management?action=start
- Start all the applications that invoke connection requests the DAML Ledger
Results
The intermittent backup process creates a daily backup of each Replica node on the backup destination server.
What to do next
Restore the backup data on another system. See Restore the VMware Blockchain Intermittent Backup Data.
