Physical backups of an entire node
Kudu does not provide a built-in physical backup and restore functionality yet. However, it is possible to create a physical backup of a Kudu node (either tablet server or master) and restore it later.
- Stop all Kudu processes in the cluster. This prevents the tablets on the backed up node from being rereplicated elsewhere unnecessarily.
- If creating a backup, make a copy of the WAL, metadata, and data directories on each node to be backed up. It is important that this copy preserve all file attributes as well as sparseness.
- If restoring from a backup, delete the existing WAL, metadata, and data directories, then restore the backup via move or copy. As with creating a backup, it is important that the restore preserve all file attributes and sparseness.
- Start all Kudu processes in the cluster.