Examples

Setting up your configuration file

Before you are able to use any of the cli commands, you need to set up your configuration file in .bbackup.yaml in your home directory.

A basic version would be:

stages:
  s3:
    type: s3
    bucket: <bucket>
    region: <region>
    accessKey: <accessKey>
    accessSecret: <accessSecret>
  zfs:
    type: zfs
    remote: s3

if you need throttling or encryption you can add this with stages

further documentation about the config file.

Adding a volume to a backup group

Given you have a pool/volume and you want to add them to a backup group my-group. If you dont need more then one group you can omit the --group flag and the volume is assigned to the default group.

zfs-backup-blob group add-volume --volume pool/volume --group my-group

further documentation about add volume.

List volumes which belong to backup groups

Given you want to find out which zfs volumes you are making backups of.

zfs-backup-blob group list-volumes

this yields something like:

+------------------------------+---------+
| VOLUME                       | GROUP   |
+------------------------------+---------+
| pool/volume                  | default |
+------------------------------+---------+

further documentation about list volumes.

Creating snapshots

Given you want to create backups of your zfs volumes in a backup group.

Then the first step is to create zfs snapshots and tag them with the type (full or incremental).

Note

Zfs snapshots are not created atomically across volumes. The snapshots stay local until you decide to push them to the blob storage with the sync command.

Given you have two volumes in a backup group my-group and you want to create a full snapshot of them. The following command would create two zfs snapshots.

zfs-backup-blob group snapshot --group my-group --type full

further documentation about snapshots.

Uploading snapshots to the blob storage

Given you have a backup group my-group and you want to push the snapshots to the blob storage.

Note

This command will take all accumulated snapshots since the last sync and upload them to the blob storage. It’s up to you if you execute this command right after the snapshots command or if you delay it to a later point in time.

zfs-backup-blob group sync --group my-group

further documentation about syncing.

Viewing backups of a volume

Given you want to find out how many backups are stored on the blob storage for a volume.

zfs-backup-blob backup list --volume pool/volume

will yield something like:

+------------------------------------+------+-------+
| KEY                                | TYPE | SIZE  |
+------------------------------------+------+-------+
| pool/volume                        | full | 111MB |
+------------------------------------+------+-------+

the key can be used to restore the particular backup.

further documentation about volume backups.

Restoring a Backup

Given you have a pool/volume and a backup_blob_2024-08-11T00-10-01Z was created and uploaded to the blob storage.

If you restore it with the command below, it will create a new volume pool/restored-volume with the content of the backup.

zfs-backup-blob backup restore --blob-key pool/volume/backup_blob_2024-08-11T00-10-01Z --target pool/restored-volume

further documentation about backup restore.