Tag: backup

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Automating AWS Lightsail backups using snapshots and Lambda

Update 11/11/19 – limited automatic snapshots now available.

Some of the most glaring omissions from Lightsail are scheduled tasks or triggers – which would provide the ability to automate backups. Competitors in this space like DigitalOcean are all set, as they offer a backup option, whereas for AWS I’m assuming they hope you’ll shift over to EC2 as fast as possible to get the extra bells and whistles.

Of course you can manually create snapshots – just log in and hit the button. It’s just the scheduling that’s missing.

I have one Lightsail server that’s been running for 6 months now, and it’s all been rosy. Except – I had been using a combination of first AWS-CLI automated backups (which wasn’t ideal as it needed a machine to run them), and then some GUI automation via Skeddly. However – while Skeddly works just fine, I’d rather DIY this problem using Lambda and keep everything in cloud native functions.

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Automatic Local, FTP and Email Backups of MySQL Databases with Cron

I’ll start by saying this is not all my own code, it is based on dagon design’s original release in 2007 (Automatic MySql Backup Script) but this version builds on their version 2.1 to add FTP support.

What this script does:

  • Backup all of your MySQL databases on a server individually, then package them into a single tar.
  • Save that tar locally, on a FTP server or even email it to you

What you need:

  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • An account with relevant mysql access (it needs access to the databases you wish to backup)

Download:

Zip containing dbbackup.php & dbbackupconfig.php – dbbackup.zip

What I’ve added:

To upload to a remote FTP server, I added this to the config file:

######################################################################
## FTP Options
######################################################################

// Use FTP Option?
$useftp = true;

// Use passive mode?
$usepassive = true;

// FTP Server Address
$ftp_server = 'host';

// FTP Username & Password
$ftp_user_name = 'username';
$ftp_user_pass = 'password';

and this to the main file below email sending:

// do we ftp the file?
if ($useftp == true) {
$file = $BACKUP_DEST.'/'.$BACKUP_NAME;
$remote_file = $BACKUP_NAME;

// set up basic connection
$conn_id = ftp_connect($ftp_server);

// login with username and password
$login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user_name, $ftp_user_pass);

// turn passive mode on?
ftp_pasv($conn_id, $usepassive);

// upload a file
if (ftp_put($conn_id, $remote_file, $file, FTP_BINARY)) {
 echo "successfully uploaded to ftp: $remotefile\n";
} else {
 echo "There was a problem while uploading $remotefile\n";
}

// close the connection
ftp_close($conn_id);
}

That’s all!