Duplicity

Intro

Duplicity Screenshot

Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server. Because duplicity uses librsync, the incremental archives are space efficient and only record the parts of files that have changed since the last backup. Because duplicity uses GnuPG to encrypt and/or sign these archives, they will be safe from spying and/or modification by the server.

So what does this mean for our stack? It means we can leverage Duplicity to backup all our data-at-rest to a wide variety of cloud providers, including, but not limited to:

acd_cli
Amazon S3
Backblaze B2
DropBox
ftp
Google Docs
Google Drive
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Onedrive
Rackspace Cloudfiles
rsync
ssh/scp
SwiftStack

Ingredients

Docker swarm cluster with persistent shared storage
Credentials for one of the Duplicity's supported upload destinations

Preparation

Setup data locations

We'll need a folder to store a docker-compose .yml file, and an associated .env file. If you're following my filesystem layout, create /var/data/config/duplicity (for the config), and /var/data/duplicity (for the metadata) as per the following example:

mkdir /var/data/config/duplicity
mkdir /var/data/duplicity
cd /var/data/config/duplicity

(Optional) Create Google Cloud Storage bucket

I didn't already have an archival/backup provider, so I chose Google Cloud "cloud" storage for the low price-point - 0.7 cents per GB/month (Plus you start with $300 credit even when signing up for the free tier). You can use any destination supported by Duplicity's URL scheme though, just make sure you specify the necessary environment variables.

Sign up, create an empty project, enable billing, and create a bucket. Give your bucket a unique name, example "jack-and-jills-bucket" (it's unique across the entire Google Cloud)
Under "Storage" section > "Settings" > "Interoperability" tab > click "Enable interoperable access" and then "Create a new key" button and note both Access Key and Secret.

Prepare {{ no such element: dict object['recipe'] }} environment

Generate a random passphrase to use to encrypt your data. Save this somewhere safe, without it you won't be able to restore!
Seriously, save. it. somewhere. safe.
Create duplicity.env, and populate with the following variables

SRC=/var/data/
DST=gs://jack-and-jills-bucket/yes-you-can-have-subdirectories
TMPDIR=/tmp
GS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<YOUR GS ACCESS KEY>
GS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<YOUR GS SECRET ACCESS KEY>

OPTIONS=--allow-source-mismatch --exclude /var/data/runtime --exclude /var/data/registry --exclude /var/data/duplicity --archive-dir=/archive
PASSPHRASE=<YOUR CHOSEN PASSPHRASE>

Note

See the data layout reference for an explanation of the included/excluded paths above.

Run a test backup

Before we launch the automated daily backups, let's run a test backup, as per the following example:

docker run --env-file duplicity.env -it --rm -v \
/var/data:/var/data:ro -v /var/data/duplicity/tmp:/tmp -v \
/var/data/duplicity/archive:/archive tecnativa/duplicity \
/etc/periodic/daily/jobrunner

You should see some activity, with a summary of bytes transferred at the end.

Run a test restore

Repeat after me: "If you don't verify your backup, it's not a backup".

Warning

Depending on what tier of storage you chose from your provider (i.e., Google Coldline, or Amazon S3), you may be charged for downloading data.

Run a variation of the following to confirm a file you expect to be backed up, is backed up. (I used traefik.yml from the traefik recipe, since this is likely to exist for every reader).

docker run --env-file duplicity.env -it --rm \
-v /var/data:/var/data:ro \
-v /var/data/duplicity/tmp:/tmp \
-v /var/data/duplicity/archive:/archive tecnativa/duplicity \
duplicity list-current-files \
\$DST | grep traefik.yml

Once you've identified a file to test-restore, use a variation of the following to restore it to /tmp (from the perspective of the container - it's actually /var/data/duplicity/tmp)

docker run --env-file duplicity.env -it --rm \
-v /var/data:/var/data:ro \
-v /var/data/duplicity/tmp:/tmp \
-v /var/data/duplicity/archive:/archive \
tecnativa/duplicity duplicity restore \
--file-to-restore config/traefik/traefik.yml \
\$DST /tmp/traefik-restored.yml

Examine the contents of /var/data/duplicity/tmp/traefik-restored.yml to confirm it contains valid data.

{{ no such element: dict object['recipe'] }} Docker Swarm config

Now that we have confidence in our backup/restore process, let's automate it by creating a docker swarm config file in docker-compose syntax (v3), something like the example below:

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🚀 Update: Premix now includes an ansible playbook, so that sponsors can deploy an entire stack + recipes, with a single ansible command! (more here)

version: "3"

services:
    backup:
        image: tecnativa/duplicity
        env_file: /var/data/config/duplicity/duplicity.env
        networks:
          - internal
        volumes:
          - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
          - /var/data:/var/data:ro
          - /var/data/duplicity/tmp:/tmp
          - /var/data/duplicity/archive:/archive


networks:
  internal:
    driver: overlay
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: 172.16.10.0/24

Note

Setup unique static subnets for every stack you deploy. This avoids IP/gateway conflicts which can otherwise occur when you're creating/removing stacks a lot. See my list here.

Serving

Launch Duplicity stack

Launch Duplicity stack by running docker stack deploy duplicity -c <path -to-docker-compose.yml>

Nothing will happen. Very boring. But when the cron script fires (daily), duplicity will do its thing, and backup everything in /var/data to your cloud destination.

Chef's notes 📓

Automatic backup can still fail if nobody checks that it's running successfully. I'll be working on an upcoming recipe to monitor the elements of the stack, including the success/failure of duplicity jobs. ↩
The container provides the facility to specify an SMTP host and port, but not credentials, which makes it close to useless. As a result, I've left SMTP out of this recipe. To enable email notifications (if your SMTP server doesn't require auth), add SMTP_HOST, SMTP_PORT, EMAIL_FROM and EMAIL_TO variables to duplicity.env. ↩

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