Contents

• Glossary
• Database
  • Recommended strategy
• Containers
  • Docker Compose configuration file

This article describes the process of backing up Flow Production Tracking to ensure the ability to restore operations in the event of a disaster.

It is intended for Flow Production Tracking Administrators.

Glossary

• DBMS - Database Management System.
• Flow Production Tracking Instance - Refers to your Flow Production Tracking site and all its components, e.g., flow production tracking.yourstudio.com .
• Flow Production Tracking Cluster - Generic term referring to all the servers and components in Flow Production Tracking.

Database

Recommended strategy

We highly recommend scheduling a backup every day.

We recommend taking a backup of an instance database instead of backing up the entire DBMS. The database backup utility is available inside the Docker image shipped with Flow Production Tracking. It can be used to take a snapshot of the database. This is especially useful prior to upgrading the production instance.

 docker-compose run --rm dbops pg_dump -v -Fd -f /db_backup/db-flow production tracking-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)

Simply replace the variables above with the appropriate values and you should be good to go.

The options above allow you to easily load the database into another database that does not necessarily have to share the same name (which we’ve found helps when synching Production into Staging).

Each of your Flow Production Tracking Instances have their own databases, and it’s generally recommended to dump them separately so that you can easily recover one or the other environment without necessarily affecting the other.

From there, the database dumps can be regularly rsynced via cron jobs to network-mounted storage or some other backup storage solution.

For more frequent backups, a more advanced technique must be used. See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/continuous-archiving.html. Standard Flow Production Tracking Support doesn’t include setting up this kind of backup.

Containers

Containers are stateless. There is therefore not much value in backing them up. However, you may want to make sure that you have a copy, just to ensure you have them handy, and at the latest version, if you have to rebuild your Flow Production Tracking Cluster.

If you followed our Flow Production Tracking Enterprise Docker user guide, your containers should be found under /opt/flow production tracking. You can also just backup the archive that you downloaded to install the containers.

Docker Compose configuration file

You may want to backup your Docker Compose configuration file. That configuration file is client specific and will be useful in case of disaster recovery.