I’ve found myself singing the praises of Michael van Rooijen’s backup gem twice in quick succession lately - and so, I just want to run through how I’m using it, and how useful I find it.

For those not familiar with it, Backup provides a neat DSL for creating backup scripts with archiving files and databases through to common data stores (S3, Rackspace, SFTP, etc), with notifications via email, Campfire and others. If you want a rundown of all the options, click the link above - there’s quite a few. I’m using the gem to make sure all critical data for Flying Sphinx is stored in multiple locations - and particularly, with different providers.

The documentation’s pretty solid, so I won’t keep you long, but here’s two examples. First up, here’s my script for copying an archive of essential files (including a SQLite database) off to Ninefold - with the private details changed:

Backup::Model.new(:database_backup, "Database Backup") do
  archive :oedipus do |archive|
    archive.add '/mnt/sphinx/oedipus'
  end

  compress_with Gzip do |compression|
    compression.best = true
  end

  store_with Ninefold do |nf|
    nf.storage_token  = 'STORAGE_TOKEN'
    nf.storage_secret = 'STORAGE_SECRET'
    nf.path           = "oedipus/#{`hostname`.strip}"
    nf.keep           = 20
  end

  notify_by Mail do |mail|
    mail.on_success = true
    mail.on_failure = true

    mail.from      = 'support-at-flying-sphinx'
    mail.to        = 'pat-at-freelancing-gods'
    mail.address   = 'smtp.sendgrid.com'
    mail.user_name = 'SMTP_USER_NAME'
    mail.password  = 'SMTP_PASSWORD'
  end
end

For the above, I added Ninefold support to Backup, and Michael was kind enough to merge my commits in.

For my next script, though, I’m syncing directories to both S3 (in Singapore) and Rackspace (in the UK). The current releases of Backup don’t support syncing to Rackspace - but I ended up taking inspiration from fellow Melburnian Ryan Allen’s Sir Sync-a-Lot and rewrote the S3 support with his bulk MD5 approach. The code was simple enough - thanks to Wesley Beary’s excellent Fog - so I adapted the code to handle Rackspace as well.

However, I’ve not written tests for this, and my code does not yet support mirroring - so, I’ve not yet provided a patch back to Michael. If you want to use my code, feel free - but I will get to submitting a proper patch soon.

All that said, here’s the script:

Backup::Model.new(:volume_backup, "Sphinx Backup") do
  sync_with S3 do |s3|
    s3.access_key_id      = 'ACCESS_KEY'
    s3.secret_access_key  = 'SECRET_KEY'
    s3.bucket             = "fs-#{`hostname`.strip}-sync"
    s3.region             = 'ap-southeast-1'
    s3.path               = ''
    s3.mirror             = false

    s3.directories do |directory|
      directory.add '/mnt/sphinx/oedipus'
      directory.add '/mnt/sphinx/flying-sphinx'
    end
  end

  sync_with Rackspace do |rs|
    rs.api_key  = 'API_KEY'
    rs.username = 'USER_NAME'
    rs.auth_url = 'lon.auth.api.rackspacecloud.com'
    rs.bucket   = "fs-#{`hostname`.strip}-sync"
    rs.path     = ''
    rs.mirror   = false

    rs.directories do |directory|
      directory.add '/mnt/sphinx/oedipus'
      directory.add '/mnt/sphinx/flying-sphinx'
    end
  end

  notify_by Mail do |mail|
    mail.on_success = true
    mail.on_failure = true

    mail.from      = 'support-at-flying-sphinx'
    mail.to        = 'pat-at-freelancing-gods'
    mail.address   = 'smtp.sendgrid.com'
    mail.user_name = 'SMTP_USER_NAME'
    mail.password  = 'SMTP_PASSWORD'
  end
end

I’ve been running the first script for several months, and the second for close to a month - both via cron - and had no problems at all. If you’ve not got a solid backup system in place because you’re finding it complex and frustrating, you’ve now got one less excuse.