Using StoreGrid to backup data from your Amazon EC2 Instances

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Users of Amazon EC2 would be well advised to backup their user data (files/folders in EC2 instances including mounted EBS Volumes) and application data. While an obvious choice of backup destination would be a backup server running on Amazon itself (preferably on another availability zone), StoreGrid also supports the ability to backup data from your Amazon EC2 instance - to a backup server totally outside the Amazon Cloud; perhaps to a server at your own office. This way, you have an additional disaster recovery option - outside of your primary cloud environment!

As this 'market segment' evolves, and we bring our cloud computing backup solutions into production, you can expect a whole bunch of additional features and improvements. For now, you can:

Backup MySQL & MS SQL Databases from live application servers
Backup System State / Active Directory
Perform 'Point-in-time' restores of the user/application data
Backup to a StoreGrid backup server that you setup in the Amazon Cloud, OR
Backup to a StoreGrid backup server that you setup outside of the Amazon Cloud

Setting up StoreGrid clients in Amazon EC2

Setting up StoreGrid clients in an Amazon EC2 instance involves the following steps:

Download StoreGrid v3.0 Client Build
Install StoreGrid
Update StoreGrid Configuration
Start StoreGrid
Configure Backups (after configuring a StoreGrid Backup Server)

1. Download StoreGrid v3.0 Client Build:

You can download StoreGrid v3.0 SP Edition Client build for EC2 instances from the below table.

Please visit the following URL for detailed description of all the features available: http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/latest-backup-software.php. A more comprehensive StoreGrid feature list is available here, http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/desktop-backup.php

Supported OS Versions	Size	Download StoreGrid v3.0 Client Build
Windows® 7 / Vista / XP / 2000 Windows Server 2008/2003/2000, Windows SBS 2008/2003 & Windows EBS 2008 [Build No. : 3002009102219]	20.85 MB
RedHat Linux 8.0 and later, RedHat Enterprise Linux, Fedora core 3 and later, CentOS 4.2 and later, SuSE Linux 9.x and Later [Build No. : 3002009102219] (Unzip the zip file and then execute the bin file)	30.36 MB
Mandrake Linux 10.0 and Later [Build No. : 3002009102219] (Unzip the zip file and then execute the bin file)	30.22 MB
Debian Linux 3.0 and later, Gentoo and Ubuntu 5.10 and later [Build No. : 3002009102219] (Unzip the zip file and then execute the bin file)	30.59 MB
FREEBSD 5.4 and later [Build No. : 3002009102219] (Unzip the zip file and then execute the bin file)	39.74 MB
Mac OS X 10.3.x (Panther) and 10.4.x (Tiger) for PowerPcs Developer Tools not needed! [Build No. : 3002009102219]	45.31 MB
Mac OS X 10.4.5(Tiger), 10.5.x(Leopard) and 10.6.x (Snow Leopard) for Intel PCs Developer Tools not needed! [Build No. : 3002009102219]	44.93 MB
Solaris (For Solaris10 - Sun and Intel) Developer Tools not needed! [Build No. : 3002009110216]	32.82 MB

2. Install StoreGrid:

Install StoreGrid v3.0 in the EC2 instance. Please follow the installation guide, Windows & Linux for installing StoreGrid v3.0 Client in your corresponding EC2 instances.

Install StoreGrid as a Service in Windows and a daemon in Linux. This will enable StoreGrid to be started automatically when the instance is rebooted.

After installation, choose the option not to start StoreGrid immediately.

3. IMPORTANT: Update StoreGrid Configuration:

We would have to configure StoreGrid to store the internal databases in a mounted EBS drive to preserve the client meta-data. This ensures the StoreGrid internal databases are intact, when the EC2 instance is re-initiated.

These StoreGrid internal databases store the client's backup configuration, Intelli-delta signatures, client's authentication configuration and other meta-data. In a Disaster Recovery scenario all the Client configurations can be retrieved from the StoreGrid Server, but, the Intelli-delta signatures will be lost. The Intelli-delta signatures are an important part of StoreGrid incremental backups; hence, the need to preserve the Intelli-delta signatures.

Please follow the below steps to preserve the StoreGrid internal databases in the mounted EBS Volume:: Open the <StoreGrid_Home>/conf/SGConfiguration.conf file, where <StoreGrid_Home> is the StoreGrid installation location.; Change the value of 'Path' attribute of <DBStorageLocation> tag to a folder under the mounted EBS Volume.

4. Start StoreGrid:

In Windows, you can start StoreGrid from 'Start Menu -> All Programs -> Vembu StoreGrid -> Start StoreGrid'.

In Linux, you can start StoreGrid by opening a terminal window and going to the <StoreGrid_Home> and running 'sh startStoreGrid.sh' script.

5. Configure Backups (after configuring a StoreGrid Backup Server):

Now, you will be able to access the StoreGrid WebConsole from, http://<MachineName>:6060 from the browser. Please login with the user name and password as selected during the installation and configure backups.

NOTES:

You can open the firewall of the EC2 instance for TCP ports 6060 (HTTP) or 6061 (HTTPS) by authorizing the security group of the EC2 instance to login to the StoreGrid WebConsole remotely.
Your backup server can be running on Amazon EC2. Please see http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/amazon-ec2-s3-cloud-online-backup.php for details on how to configure a backup server on Amazon EC2
For details on how you can run a v3.0 backup server outside of the Amazon Cloud (on your own server), please visit http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/storegrid-mysql-support.php

For more details on configuring backups, please visit the help documentation from the following URLs: