Backup Service

Maintaining regular backups is vital to protecting your project’s data. The Liferay Cloud backup service stores iterations of environment data that can be used to restore your environments if needed. These backups include the Liferay DXP Database and the full contents of the [LIFERAY_HOME]/data folder.

From the Backups page in any environment, you can create backups, view or download retained backups, and restore an environment from a backup.

You can also configure the backup service to meet your project’s needs via the Liferay Cloud console or the backup service’s LCP.json file.

See the Backup service limitations section for more information.

The Backups Page

From the Backups page in any environment, you can view backup service information and retained backups, create manual backups, and more.

Note

The Backups page is only available in production environments for backup service versions older than 4.3.5.

Follow these steps to access the Backups page:

1. Click Backups in the menu on the left from any environment.

From here, you can perform the following tasks:

• View Backup Info: You can quickly view backup service information for the chosen environment. This includes the frequency of automated backups, the backup retention period, and time stamp information for the next scheduled backup, the latest created backup, and the oldest retained backup.

• View Backup History: You can view the full list of retained backups in the chosen environment. Each entry shows the backup’s name, size, type (Auto, Manual, or Uploaded), and time of creation. A red backup icon indicates a backup has failed. Beside it is a Backup failed message and a link to contact Support.

• Create Manual Backups: You can manually create a backup of the chosen environment. See Creating a Manual Backup for more information.

Note

Backup timestamps appear automatically based on your browser location, while backup schedules are based on the UTC±00 time zone.

From the Backups page, environment administrators also have access to the Actions button (⋮) and can download retained backups or restore environments.

You can also filter the list of backups by their status (failed or successful), or display the backups from the associated Disaster Recovery (dr) environment (if one is configured for the current environment), from the two selectors near the top of the screen.

For more information and instructions on how to perform these actions, see Downloading and Uploading Backups and Restoring Data from a Backup.

Creating a Manual Backup

To back up your environment manually from the Backups page, click on Backup Now. This process can take several minutes or hours depending on the size of your services.

Once started, the backup service icon indicates a backup is in progress, and a message appears at the top of the screen. The new backup also appears in the Backup history.

Warning

Backups created while data is actively changing on your Liferay instance risk creating inconsistent data. To ensure a completely consistent backup, coordinate with your database administrator to freeze updates while you perform a manual backup.

Clicking View logs redirects you to the Logs page, where you can view the backup stages in real-time. You can also view backup logs in the Logs tab of the backup service’s page.

See Reading Liferay Cloud Service Logs for more information about viewing service logs.

Configuring the Backup Service

You can configure the backup service to meet your project’s needs via the Liferay Cloud console or the backup service’s LCP.json file.

See Environment Variables Reference for a list of variables you can use to configure the backup service.

Important

Whenever the backup service is reconfigured, it restarts and may stop receiving requests for some minutes or behave differently depending on the configuration.

Configuring the Backup Service via the Liferay Cloud Console

1. Navigate to an environment where the backup service is deployed.

2. Click on Services in the environment menu.

3. Click the Backup service to see the backup service’s environment variables.

   

   You can also access the backup service’s page by clicking Backup in the environment’s Overview page.

4. Add variables from the Environment Variables Reference list to configure the backup service.

5. Click Save Changes.

Apart from regular environment variables, you can also set Secret variables via the Liferay Cloud console. See Managing Secure Environment Variables with Secrets for more information.

Configuring the Backup Service via the Backup LCP.json File

1. Use a text editor to open the backup LCP.json file located at the following path: /{your_project_name}/backup/LCP.json.

2. Scroll down to the environment section.

   "env": {
     "LCP_BACKUP_FOLDER": "/opt/liferay/data",
     "LCP_DATABASE_SERVICE": "mydatabase",
     "LCP_MASTER_USER_PASSWORD": "mypassword"
   },
   

3. Add variables from the Environment Variables Reference list to configure the backup service.

4. Save the file and deploy it to your project to implement the configuration.

See Configuration via LCP.json for more information about configuring environment services via their LCP.json files.

Scheduling Automated Backups and Cleanups

Determining how frequently backups are created and removed can help protect your data and optimize storage.

Warning

Creating backups while data is actively changing on your Liferay instance risks data inconsistency. Configure your backup schedule to kick off during times with reduced activity to mitigate the risk of data inconsistency. To ensure a completely consistent backup, coordinate with your database administrator to freeze updates while you perform a manual backup, and set it to run at different times from the cleanup schedule (LCP_BACKUP_CLEANUP_SCHEDULE).

There are two ways to configure an automated backup schedule:

• Via the console
• Using environment variables

Configuring the Schedule via the Console

1. From the chosen environment, navigate to the Backup service and click the Configuration tab.

   

   Note

   If this environment has no backups, clicking the Set up a regular backup link on the Backup service page also takes you to the Configuration tab.

2. Choose the desired backup frequency from available options in the Create Backups drop-down menu:

   • Daily: A backup is created every day; you can set the time it is created (in the UTC±00 time zone). Daily backups are recommended for production environments.

   • Weekly: A backup is created every week; you can set the day of the week and what time it is created (in the UTC±00 time zone).

   • Advanced: You can set a cron schedule value for a more complex frequency.

   • Not set (manually): No automatic backups are created. You must create all backups manually. This is the default setting for non-production environments.

   

3. Choose the desired retention period from the Remove backups older than selector.

4. Click Save changes.

The backup service restarts, and the changes are applied when the service has fully restarted.

Configuring the Schedule Using Environment Variables

Use these variables per environment to customize when backups are created and removed:

• Automated Backups: Add the LCP_BACKUP_CREATE_SCHEDULE variable with a cron scheduling value to set the frequency of automated backups.

• Automated Cleanups: Add the LCP_BACKUP_CLEANUP_SCHEDULE variable with a cron scheduling value to set the frequency of automated backup cleanups.

• Retention Period: Add the LCP_BACKUP_RETENTION_PERIOD variable with a numerical value (between 0-30) to set the number of days backups are retained before being removed by automated cleanups.

Note

Both standard and non-standard cron scheduling syntax are based on the UTC±00 time zone. When using non-standard cron syntax, automated backups and cleanups run at the start of the specified value. For example, @daily runs backups every day at 00:00 UTC.

You can use these environment variables by setting them via the Liferay Cloud console (in the Backup service), or by setting them in your project repository’s backup/LCP.json file and deploying the Backup service to your environment.

Warning

If you set the environment variables via the Liferay Cloud console but later deploy the Backup service from your repository with a different configuration in backup/LCP.json, the configuration from your repository overwrites the environment variables set in the console.

This backup/LCP.json example creates backups every 12 hours (i.e., 00:00 and 12:00 UTC) and performs monthly cleanups that remove backups over 30 days old:

"env": {
  "LCP_BACKUP_FOLDER": "/opt/liferay/data",
  "LCP_DATABASE_SERVICE": "mydatabase",
  "LCP_MASTER_USER_PASSWORD": "mypassword",
  "LCP_BACKUP_CREATE_SCHEDULE": "0 0,12 * * *",
  "LCP_BACKUP_CLEANUP_SCHEDULE": "@monthly",
  "LCP_BACKUP_RETENTION_PERIOD": "30"
},

Improving Backup Service Performance

You can configure the backup service to decrease the size of backups or accelerate their creation and restoration processes for better performance.

Excluding Adaptive Media from Backups

Liferay SaaS Liferay PaaS + Google Cloud Storage Liferay DXP 2024.Q3+ Backup Service 5.17.0+

When creating and restoring backups, you may choose to exclude adaptive media. Liferay can generate adaptive media as needed, so it need not be backed up. You can enable this feature by setting the values of LCP_BACKUP_EXCLUDE_GENERATED_DL_FILES_ON_BACKUP_CREATE and LCP_BACKUP_EXCLUDE_GENERATED_DL_FILES_ON_BACKUP_RESTORE to true. By reducing the amount of data that gets backed up, backups become faster and lighter.

Discovering the Transfer Strategy

Google Cloud Storage Liferay DXP 2024.Q1.6+ Backup Service 5.17.0+

When restoring a backup on GCS (Google Cloud Storage), the backup service must use a transfer strategy. Liferay Cloud supports two transfer strategies for the document library: gsutil and rclone.

You can verify which transfer strategy is in use through the backup service logs. After restoring a backup on GCS, you see a message like this:

Spawning [TRANSFER_STRATEGY] process to transfer files from [SOURCE] to [DESTINATION]

The command written in [TRANSFER_STRATEGY] is either gsutil or rclone.

You can choose your transfer strategy with the LCP_DOCUMENT_LIBRARY_GCS_TRANSFER_STRATEGY environment variable. By default, the backup service uses gsutil to ensure backups run smoothly on Liferay DXP versions that don’t support rclone.

Note

Rclone is faster, lighter, and less error-prone than gsutil as a backup transfer strategy. Always use rclone if your Liferay DXP version supports it, as noted above.

Backup Service Versioning

Liferay Cloud sets a minimum version for the backup service. This is typically done when other services become incompatible with the outdated backup service or when a new version introduces critical fixes and enhancements.

When Liferay Cloud raises the minimum version, it upgrades the backup service automatically if it doesn’t meet the new minimum requirement. When Liferay Cloud overrides deployments of lower versions, a message appears in the logs and on the Overview page.

Note

When Liferay Cloud lowers the minimum version, your backup service is unaffected. You can deploy an older version that meets the new requirement manually.

Key Deployment Directories

File Type	Path	Description
SQL Scripts	backup/configs/[ENV]/scripts/	Any .sql scripts here automatically execute after each backup restore.

Environment Variables Reference

Name	Default Value	Description
LCP_BACKUP_CLEANUP_SCHEDULE	0 1 * * *	Schedules automated cleanups using cron scheduling syntax. Cleanups remove all backups that exceed the backup retention period. It must not conflict with LCP_BACKUP_CREATE_SCHEDULE.
LCP_BACKUP_CREATE_SCHEDULE	[5-55][0-1] * * *	Schedules automated backups using cron scheduling syntax. It must not conflict with LCP_BACKUP_CLEANUP_SCHEDULE. In versions 3.2.1 and above of the backup service, if no value is specified, a random default is created.
LCP_BACKUP_EXCLUDE_GENERATED_DL_FILES_ON_BACKUP_CREATE	false	Excludes adaptive media from the document library when creating backups. See Excluding Adaptive Media from Backups for more information.
LCP_BACKUP_EXCLUDE_GENERATED_DL_FILES_ON_BACKUP_RESTORE	false	Excludes adaptive media from the document library when restoring backups. See Excluding Adaptive Media from Backups for more information.
LCP_BACKUP_RESTORE_SCHEDULE	N/A	Schedules automated restores using cron scheduling syntax. Intended for use with Disaster Recovery environments.
LCP_BACKUP_RESTORE_DL_DOWNLOAD_AND_EXTRACT_STRATEGY	download-then-extract	Determines the download and extract strategy for the document library. Use download-then-extract for backups of static data that doesn’t change frequently, or stream-pipeline for data pipelines with frequent changes that require fast recovery.
LCP_BACKUP_RETENTION_PERIOD	30	Determines which backups are removed during scheduled cleanups. Select the number of days backups are retained before being removed by cleanups. Only values between 0 and 30 are allowed.
LCP_DATABASE_SERVICE	database	The database service’s ID.
LCP_DBNAME	lportal	The database name.
LCP_DEBUG_LOG	false	Enables debug logging for the Backup service. Set to true or false.
LCP_DOCUMENT_LIBRARY_GCS_TRANSFER_STRATEGY	gsutil	Determines the document library transfer strategy. rclone requires a minimum Liferay version, but offers improved performance.
LCP_GCP_STORAGE_UPLOAD_MAX_RETRIES	6	The maximum amount of times to retry uploading a backup if it fails. After this limit, the upload is aborted and may start over completely (up to two times).
LCP_GCP_STORAGE_UPLOAD_MAX_RETRY_DELAY	64	The delay (in seconds) between each of the retries configured by LCP_GCP_STORAGE_UPLOAD_MAX_RETRIES.
LCP_GCP_STORAGE_UPLOAD_RETRY_DELAY_MULTIPLIER	3	Multiplies the delay set by LCP_GCP_STORAGE_UPLOAD_MAX_RETRY_DELAY on each subsequent retry.
LCP_GCP_STORAGE_UPLOAD_TIMEOUT	6000	The maximum delay time (in seconds) between backup upload requests (or retries). This sets an upper limit to the amount that LCP_GCP_STORAGE_UPLOAD_RETRY_DELAY_MULTIPLIER can increase the delay time.
LCP_MASTER_USER_NAME	dxpcloud	The master username.
LCP_MASTER_USER_PASSWORD	LCP_PROJECT_MASTER_TOKEN	The master password.
LCP_SERVICE_LOG_LEVEL	INFO	The lowest priority level of log messages to display. Set to the log level’s name or a numerical value. See Log Levels for more information.

Related Topics

• Configuration via LCP.json
• Database Service