Backup and Restore the United Manufacturing Hub

This page describes how to backup and restore the entire United Manufacturing Hub.

4 minute read

This page describes how to back up the following:

All Node-RED flows
All Grafana dashboards
The Helm values used for installing the united-manufacturing-hub release
All the contents of the United Manufacturing Hub database

It does not back up:

Additional databases other than the United Manufacturing Hub default database
TimescaleDB continuous aggregates: Follow the official documentation to learn how.
TimescaleDB policies: Follow the official documentation to learn how.
Everything else not included in the previous list

This procedure only works on Windows.

Before you begin

Download the backup scripts and extract the content in a folder of your choice.

For this task, you need to have PostgreSQL installed on your machine.

You also need to have enough space on your machine to store the backup. To check the size of the database, follow the steps below:

From the Pod section in UMHLens / OpenLens, click on united-manufacturing-hub-timescaledb-0 to open the details page.
Click the Pod Shell button to open a shell in the container.
Enter the postgres shell:
```
psql
```
Connect to the database:
```
\c factoryinsight
```

Run the following command to get the size of the database:

SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size('factoryinsight'));

Backup

Generate Grafana API Key

Create a Grafana API Token for an admin user by following these steps:

Open the Grafana UI in your browser and log in with an admin user.
Click on the Settings icon in the left sidebar and select API Keys.
Give the API key a name and change its role to Admin.
Optionally set an expiration date.
Click Add.
Copy the generated API key and save it for later.

Stop workloads

To prevent data inconsistencies, you need to temporarily stop the MQTT and Kafka Brokers.

In UMHLens / OpenLens go to the Workloads > StatefulSets tab.
Select the united-manufacturing-hub-kafka StatefulSet
Click the Scale button to select the number of replicas for the StatefulSet.
Set the number of replicas to 0 and click Scale.
Repeat the process for the united-manufacturing-hub-hivemqce StatefulSet.

Backup using the script

The backup script is located inside the folder you downloaded earlier.

Open a terminal and navigate inside the folder.
```
cd <FOLDER_PATH>
```
Run the script:
```
.\backup.ps1 -IP <IP_OF_THE_SERVER> -GrafanaToken <GRAFANA_API_KEY> -KubeconfigPath <PATH_TO_KUBECONFIG>
```
You can find a list of all available parameters down below.
If OutputPath is not set, the backup will be stored in the current folder.

This script might take a while to finish, depending on the size of your database and your connection speed.

If the connection is interrupted, there is currently no option to resume the process, therefore you will need to start again.

Here is a list of all available parameters:

Available parameters
Parameter	Description	Required	Default value
`GrafanaToken`	Grafana API key	Yes
`IP`	IP of the cluster to backup	Yes
`KubeconfigPath`	Path to the kubeconfig file	Yes
`DatabaseDatabase`	Name of the databse to backup	No	factoryinsight
`DatabasePassword`	Password of the database user	No	changeme
`DatabasePort`	Port of the database	No	5432
`DatabaseUser`	Database user	No	factoryinsight
`DaysPerJob`	Number of days worth of data to backup in each parallel job	No	31
`EnableGpgEncryption`	Set to `true` if you want to encrypt the backup	No	`false`
`EnableGpgSigning`	Set to `true` if you want to sign the backup	No	`false`
`GpgEncryptionKeyId`	ID of the GPG key used for encryption	No
`GpgSigningKeyId`	ID of the GPG key used for signing	No
`GrafanaPort`	External port of the Grafana service	No	8080
`OutputPath`	Path to the folder where the backup will be stored	No	Current folder
`ParallelJobs`	Number of parallel job backups to run	No	4
`SkipDiskSpaceCheck`	Skip checking available disk space	No	`false`
`SkipGpgQuestions`	Set to `true` if you want to sign or encrypt the backup	No	`false`

Restore

Each component of the United Manufacturing Hub can be restored separately, in order to allow for more flexibility and to reduce the damage in case of a failure.

Cluster configuration

To restore the Kubernetes cluster, execute the .\restore-helm.ps1 script with the following parameters:

.\restore-helm.ps1 -KubeconfigPath <PATH_TO_KUBECONFIG> -BackupPath <PATH_TO_BACKUP_FOLDER>

Verify that the cluster is up and running by opening UMHLens / OpenLens and checking if the workloads are running.

Grafana dashboards

To restore the Grafana dashboards, you first need to create a Grafana API Key for an admin user in the new cluster by following these steps:

Open the Grafana UI in your browser and log in with an admin user.
Click on the Settings icon in the left sidebar and select API Keys.
Give the API key a name and change its role to Admin.
Optionally set an expiration date.
Click Add.
Copy the generated API key and save it for later.

Then, on your local machine, execute the .\restore-grafana.ps1 script with the following parameters:

.\restore-grafana.ps1 -FullUrl http://<IP_OF_THE_SERVER>:8080 -Token <GRAFANA_API_KEY> -BackupPath <PATH_TO_BACKUP_FOLDER>

Restore Node-RED flows

To restore the Node-RED flows, execute the .\restore-nodered.ps1 script with the following parameters:

.\restore-nodered.ps1 -KubeconfigPath <PATH_TO_KUBECONFIG> -BackupPath <PATH_TO_BACKUP_FOLDER>

Restore the database

To restore the database, execute the .\restore-timescale.ps1 script with the following parameters:

.\restore-timescale.ps1 -Ip <IP_OF_THE_SERVER> -BackupPath <PATH_TO_BACKUP_FOLDER> -PatroniSuperUserPassword <DATABASE_PASSWORD>

What’s next

Take a look at the UMH-Backup repository
Learn how to manually backup and restore the database
Read how to import and export Node-RED flows via the UI

Last modified June 7, 2023: build: version 0.9.13 (bc08e78)