Physical backups of an entire node

Kudu does not yet provide any built-in backup and restore functionality. However, it is possible to create a physical backup of a Kudu node, either tablet server or master, and restore it later.

1. Stop all Kudu processes in the cluster. This prevents the tablets on the backed up node from being rereplicated elsewhere unnecessarily.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Start all Kudu processes in the cluster.