Backup

A Backup Ruby Gem

Backup is a Ruby Gem written for Unix and Rails environments. It can be used both with and without the Ruby on Rails framework! This gem offers a quick and simple solution to backing up databases such as MySQL/PostgreSQL and Files/Folders. All backups can be transferred to Amazon S3 or any remote server you have access to, using either SCP, SFTP or regular FTP. Backup handles Compression, Archiving, Encryption, Backup Cleaning (Cycling) and supports Email Notifications.

Authors/Maintainers

Backup’s Current Capabilities

Storage Methods

Amazon S3
Remote Server (Available Protocols: SCP, SFTP, FTP)
Local server (Example Locations: Another Hard Drive, Network path) (coming in the next gem release)

Adapters

MySQL
SQLite (in the next gem release)
PostgreSQL
Archive (Any files and/or folders)
Custom (Anything you can produce using the command line)

Archiving

Handles archiving for the Archive and Custom adapters.

Encryption

Handles encryption of all backups for any adapter. To decrypt a “Backup encrypted file” you can use Backup’s built-in utility command:

sudo backup --decrypt /path/to/encrypted/file.enc

Backup Cleaning

With Backup you can very easily specify how many backups you would like to have stored (per backup procedure!) on your Amazon S3, Remote or Local server. When the limit you specify gets exceeded, the oldest backup will automatically be cleaned up.

Email Notifications

You will be able to specify whether you would like to be notified by email when a backup successfully been stored. Simply fill in the email configuration block and set “notify” to true inside the backup procedure you would like to be notified of.

Quick Example of a Single Backup Setting/Procedure inside the Backup Configuration File

backup 'mysql-backup-s3' do
  adapter :mysql do
    user      'user'
    password  'password'
    database  'database'
  end
  storage :s3 do
    access_key_id     'access_key_id'
    secret_access_key 'secret_access_key'
    bucket            '/bucket/backups/mysql/'
    use_ssl           true
  end
  keep_backups 25
  encrypt_with_password 'my_password'
  notify true
end

Everything above should be pretty straightforward, so now, using the “trigger” we specified between the backup and do you can execute this backup procedure like so:

Rails Environment