This topic describes how to install BOSH Backup and Restore (BBR).

Overview

To install BBR, first validate that your jump box VM is a valid BOSH backup host, then copy the bbr executable to the jump box and configure BBR.

For more information, see Install and Configure BOSH Backup and Restore below.

After installing BBR, you can run bbr commands to back up and restore your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition deployment.

For more information about using BOSH Backup and Restore, see:

Prerequisites

Using BBR requires the following:

  • A jump box.

    A jump box is a separate, hardened server on your network that provides a controlled means of accessing the other VMs on your network. See the jumpbox-deployment GitHub repository for an example jump box deployment.

    You must have a jump box before you can install BBR to the jump box.

  • The OpenBSD version of netcat must be installed on the jump box host.

  • A bbr executable file. You must have the correct BBR executable version for your TKGI installation.

Note: BBR does not support SSH gateways.

Install and Configure BOSH Backup and Restore

To install and configure BBR:

  1. Configure Your Jump Box for BBR
  2. Install BBR on Your Jump Box
  3. Verify Your BBR Installation
  4. Configure BBR Logging

Configure Your Jump Box for BBR

Your jump box must meet or exceed minimum BBR requirements. You can use the VMware Tanzu Operations Manager VM as your jump box if it can be configured to meet all of the requirements below.

To configure your jump box to meet BBR requirements:

  1. Size the jump box to have sufficient storage space for your backups.

  2. Ensure the jump box can communicate with the network containing your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition deployment.

    BBR uses SSH to orchestrate the back up of your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition instances using port 22 by default.

  3. Configure the jump box to be in the same network as the deployed VMs.

    BBR connects to the deployed VMs at their private IP addresses.

  4. Ensure there is minimal network latency between the jump box and the source VMs BBR backs up.

Install BBR on Your Jump Box

To install the bbr executable to your jump box:

  1. Download the latest compatible BOSH Backup and Restore release from the Broadcom Support.

  2. To add executable permissions to the bbr binary file, run the following command:

    chmod a+x bbr

  3. To securely copy the bbr binary file to your jump box, run the following command:

    scp LOCAL-PATH-TO-BBR/bbr JUMP-BOX-USER@JUMP-BOX-ADDRESS:

    Where:

    • LOCAL-PATH-TO-BBR is the path to the bbr binary you downloaded from Broadcom Support.
    • JUMP-BOX-USER is the SSH user name for connecting to the jump box.
    • JUMP-BOX-ADDRESS is the IP address, or hostname, of the jump box.

Verify Your BBR Installation

To verify that BBR is installed:

  1. Run the following command:

    bbr version

    Verify the returned BBR version.

Configure BBR Logging

BBR writes back up and restore logs to the current directory in a file named bbr-TIMESTAMP.err.log.

By default BBR writes errors associated with stack traces to the log file.

BBR also reports default information about the back up and restore run:

  • The back up and restore scripts that it finds.
  • The time when the process starts and finishes.
  • The time when stages, such as pre-backup scripts or backup scripts, start and finish.
  • The errors that occur.

To troubleshoot a failed BBR run, enable verbose logging. When executed in verbose mode, BBR reports the following additional information:

  • Logs about the API requests made to the BOSH server.
  • All commands executed on remote instances.
  • All commands executed on local environment.
  • Standard in and standard out streams for the back up and restore scripts when they are executed.

To enable verbose logging, use the optional --debug flag.

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