Back up and restore volumes

The cinder command-line interface provides the tools for creating a volume backup. You can restore a volume from a backup as long as the backup's associated database information (or backup metadata) is intact in the Block Storage database.

Run this command to create a backup of a volume:

$ cinder backup-create VOLUME

Where VOLUME is the name or ID of the volume.

The previous command will also return a backup ID. Use this backup ID when restoring the volume, as in:

$ cinder backup-restore backup_ID

As mentioned earlier, volume backups are dependent on the Block Storage database. Because of this, we recommend that you also back up your Block Storage database regularly in order to ensure data recovery.

Note

Alternatively, you can export and save the metadata of selected volume backups. Doing so will preclude the need to back up the entire Block Storage database. This is particularly useful if you only need a small subset of volumes to survive a catastrophic database failure. For more information on how to export and import volume backup metadata, see the section called “Export and import backup metadata”.