Periodic database backup and recovery operations

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To set up periodic database backup and recovery operations, you first need to choose which cloud provider and database service you want to use. Once you have chosen, you can leverage the database service's capabilities to perform automated backups at regular intervals. Most managed database services provide options for backing up the database, setting retention policies for backups, and recovering from these backups when needed.

For this demonstration, we'll consider a common scenario using AWS's Relational Database Service (RDS), which supports automated backups, database snapshots, and point-in-time recovery features. The Pulumi AWS provider makes it relatively simple to set these features up programmatically.

Below is a TypeScript program using Pulumi to create an AWS RDS instance with automated backups enabled. The `backupRetentionPeriod` property specifies the number of days for which automated backups are retained. Setting `multiAz` to true ensures that our database instances are highly available by utilizing multiple availability zones.

Keep in mind this is a basic example, and in a production setup, you may need additional configurations such as setting up security groups, parameter groups, and possibly enhancing your recovery strategy to include exporting snapshots to a different region for disaster recovery purposes.

```typescript
import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as aws from "@pulumi/aws";

const dbInstance = new aws.rds.Instance("my-db-instance", {
    // Specifies the name of the RDS instance
    instanceClass: "db.t3.micro",

// Specifies the allocated storage in gibibytes (GiB)
    allocatedStorage: 20,

// The name of the database to create when the DB instance is created
    dbName: "mydatabase",

// The database engine to use for the instance
    engine: "mysql",

// Specifies the amount of storage (in GiB) to be initially allocated for the database instance
    storageType: "gp2",

// The EC2 Availability Zone that the database instance will be created in
    availabilityZone: "us-west-2a",

// The daily time range during which automated backups are created if automated backups are enabled
    backupWindow: "07:00-09:00",

// The number of days to retain backups for
    backupRetentionPeriod: 7,

// Multi-AZ deployments for enhanced availability and durability
    multiAz: true,

// Specifies the accessibility options for the DB instance
    publiclyAccessible: true,

// The username and password for the database admin account
    username: "admin",
    password: "mySecretPassword",
    
    // Specifies whether or not mapping of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) accounts to database accounts is enabled 
    iamDatabaseAuthenticationEnabled: false,
});

// Optional: Export the RDS instance endpoint to access the database
export const dbInstanceEndpoint = dbInstance.endpoint;

```

This program defines a single RDS database instance with the specified properties. The multi-availability zone deployment option is specified for high availability. The `backupRetentionPeriod` property sets how long the automated backups are retained, which you can adjust as needed.

After you run this program using the Pulumi CLI, the AWS RDS instance with the specified backup configuration will be created. To recover the database from a backup, you would typically use the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or create additional Pulumi code that specifies the backup from which to restore.

Keep in mind that while Pulumi can set up the automated backup parameters for you, the actual backup and restore operations, especially in the case of a disaster recovery scenario, will often require additional steps that might involve manual interventions, scripting, or further use of cloud provider APIs.