It use to be hard to back up Rancher, but with Rancher 2 it’s super simple. Upgrading, backing up, and restoring your Rancher server should be part of your regular routine. Join me in this tutorial as we walk through backing up, upgrading, and restoring a single node Rancher Docker install in just a couple of minutes. Trust me, you’ll feel better after you do.
Need to install Rancher? See my guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWqBxCIfxw4
See the full guide from Rancher https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/upgrades/upgrades/single-node/
Upgrade & Backup Outline
- Create a copy of the data from your Rancher server container
- Create a backup tarball
- Pull the new Docker image
- Start the new Rancher server container
- Verify the Upgrade
- Clean up your old Rancher server container
See all containers
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docker ps
See all containers including stopped ones
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docker ps -a
Stop the container
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docker stop <RANCHER_CONTAINER_NAME>
Create a data container
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docker create --volumes-from <RANCHER_CONTAINER_NAME> --name rancher-data-<DATE> rancher/rancher:<RANCHER_CONTAINER_TAG>
Create a backup tarball
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docker run --volumes-from rancher-data-<DATE> -v $PWD:/backup:z busybox tar pzcvf /backup/rancher-data-backup-<RANCHER_VERSION>-<DATE>.tar.gz /var/lib/rancher
Run ls and you should see your tarball
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rancher-data-backup-v2.4.3-2020-06-21.tar.gz
Pull a new docker image
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docker pull rancher/rancher:<RANCHER_VERSION_TAG>
Start your new rancher server container.
Use the command you used to create your initial container, it looks something like this.
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docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped -p 9090:80 -p 9091:443 --privileged -v /opt/rancher:/var/lib/rancher --name=rancher_docker_server rancher/rancher:<RANCHER_VERSION>
Check to see if it’s running
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docker ps
Restoring Rancher from Backup
Use the command you used to create your initial container, it looks something like this.
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docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped -p 9090:80 -p 9091:443 --privileged -v /opt/rancher:/var/lib/rancher --name=rancher_docker_server rancher/rancher:<RANCHER_VERSION>
Stop the container
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docker stop <RANCHER_CONTAINER_NAME>
Delete state data and replace from backup
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docker run --volumes-from <RANCHER_CONTAINER_NAME> -v $PWD:/backup \
busybox sh -c "rm /var/lib/rancher/* -rf && \
tar pzxvf /backup/rancher-data-backup-<RANCHER_VERSION>-<DATE>.tar.gz"
Start the container
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docker start <RANCHER_CONTAINER_NAME>
Unofficial Way
Backup
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cd /opt
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docker stop rancher_docker_server
if this fails it means you named your container something else, find it by running docker ps
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sudo tar czpf rancher-data-backup-VERSION-DATE-unofficial.tar.gz rancher
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sudo mv rancher-data-backup-VERSION-DATE-unofficial.tar.gz ~/
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docker start rancher_docker_server
Restore
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cd /opt
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docker stop rancher_docker_server
if this fails it means you named your container something else, find it by running docker ps
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sudo tar xzpf rancher-data-backup-VERSION-DATE-unofficial.tar.gz
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docker start rancher_docker_server
Backup script
Your rancher server must be named similar to rancher_docker_server_v2.4.5 otherwise you’ll need to modify this. This will not work with latest tag, so be sure to pin your version.
It will need to be run with sudo or scheduled in sudo crontab -e
rancher_backup.sh
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# go to rancher dir
cd /opt
# get current rancher tag
RANCHER_TAG=$(docker ps | grep rancher/rancher | grep -Eio 'rancher/rancher:.{0,6}' | sed 's/rancher\/rancher://g')
# date format
TODAY=`date -I`
# stop docker container
docker stop rancher_docker_server_$RANCHER_TAG
# create tar
tar czpf rancher-data-backup-$RANCHER_TAG-$TODAY-unofficial.tar.gz rancher
# move tar
mv rancher-data-backup-$RANCHER_TAG-$TODAY-unofficial.tar.gz /home/USERNAME/backups/rancher_backups/
# start server
docker start rancher_docker_server_$RANCHER_TAG
upgrading to a new version
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NEW_VERSION_TAG=v2.4.8
docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped -p 9090:80 -p 9091:443 --privileged -v /opt/rancher:/var/lib/rancher --name=rancher_docker_server_$NEW_VERSION_TAG rancher/rancher:$NEW_VERSION_TAG
Links
⚙️ See all the hardware I recommend at https://l.technotim.live/gear
🚀 Don’t forget to check out the 🚀Launchpad repo with all of the quick start source files