Pre-requisites

Backups

General configuration

By default backups are scheduled (config.backup.fullSchedule) at 05:00 UTC in a window (config.backup.fullSchedule) of 1 hour of duration and with a retention policy (config.backup.retention) of 5 for non-persistent full backups. You will have to find out the correct time window and retention policy that fit your needs.

There are more general fine tuning parameters that could affect backups in more aspects:

  • Compression algorithm (config.backup.compression): affect backup size and computational resources used when creating and reading them.
  • Upload disk concurrency (config.backup.uploadDiskConcurrency): When reading from disk incresing the parallelism could speed up the operation but this depend really on the storage capacity to support parallel reads.
  • Maximum size of generated files (config.backup.tarSizeThreshold): could be relevant on some storage. Database backups can be huge so splitting is a good practice to take into account.
  • Network rate limit (config.backup.maxNetworkBandwitdh): could be important to limit costs and/or resource usage.
  • Disk rate limit (config.backup.maxDiskBandwitdh): could be important to limit costs and/or resource usage.

We reccomend to configure all those aspects by creating a YAML values file for backup configuration to include in the helm installation (-f or --values parameters) of the StackGres operator similar to the following:

configurations:
  backupconfig:
    baseBackups:
      retention: 5
      cronSchedule: "0 5 * * *"
      compression: lz4
      performance:
        uploadDiskConcurrency: 1
        # maxNetworkBandwitdh:
        # maxDiskBandwitdh:

Storage

Backups support the following storage options:

  • AWS S3
  • Google CLoud Storage
  • Azure Blob Storage

By default backups are stored in a MinIO service as a separate component as a StackGres cluster helm chart dependency. MinIO is compatible with S3 service and is configured to stores the backups in a persistent volume with the default storage class of the kubernetes cluster. We reccomend to disable the dependency and use a cloud provider. To disable MinIO dependency create a YAML values file for backup storage configuration to include in the helm installation (-f or --values parameters) of the StackGres operator similar to the following:

configurations:
  backupconfig:
    # fill the preferred storage method with
    # specific credentials and configurations
    storage:
      s3: {}
      s3Compatible: {}
      gcs: {}
      azureBlob: {}
minio:
  create: false

Restore

StackGres can perfrom a database restoration from a stackgres backup by just setting the UID of the backup CR that represents the backup that we want to restore. Like this:

cluster:
  initialData:
    restore:
      fromBackup: #the backup UID to restore

Monitoring

Currently StackGres integrates only with prometheus by providing prometheus exporter sidecar and offer an auto binding mechanism if prometheus is installed using the prometeus operator.

The recommended way to install prometheus operator in kubernetes is by using the helm chart for prometheus operator:

helm install --namespace prometheus prometheus-operator stable/prometheus-operator

Grafana integration

By default helm chart of prometheus operator comes with grafana and StackGres offer an integration to allow monitoring a StackGres cluster pod directly from the StackGres UI. There are various options to achieve it.

All in one

You can install the prometheus operator together with StackGres operator by setting prometheus-operator.create to true, this will install also a grafana instance and it will be embed with the StackGres U autmatically:

helm install --namespace prometheus prometheus-operator stable/prometheus-operator \
  --set prometheus-operator.create=true

Automatic integration

If you already have a grafana installation in your system you can embed it automatically in the StackGres UI by setting the property grafana.autoEmbed=true:

helm install --namespace prometheus prometheus-operator stable/prometheus-operator \
  --set grafana.autoEmbed=true

This method requires the installation process to be able to access grafana API as grafana administrator by username and password (see installation via helm for more options related to automatic embedding of grafana).

Manual integration

Some manual steps are required in order to achieve such integration.

  1. Create grafana dashboard for postgres exporter and copy/paste share URL:

    Using the UI: Click on Grafana > Create > Import > Grafana.com Dashboard 9628

    Check the dashboard for more details.

  2. Copy/paste grafana dashboard URL for postgres exporter:

    Using the UI: Click on Grafana > Dashboard > Manage > Select postgres exporter dashboard > Copy URL

    Or using the value returned by the previous script.

  3. Create and copy/paste grafana API token:

    Using the UI: Grafana > Configuration > API Keys > Add API key (for viewer) > Copy key value

Non production options

We reccomend to disable all non production options in a production environment. To do so create a YAML values file to include in the helm installation (-f or --values parameters) of the StackGres operator similar to the following:

nonProductionOptions: {}

The use of MinIO in production is not considered a bad practice but we reccomend to install MinIO separately to in order to be able to change version independently from the StackGres cluster helm chart.