CBBackupMgr Backups Not Incremental

Couchbase Server
1

Something doesn’t seem right about our incremental backup strategy… We’re using the following command to run a daily incremental backup:

%BackupMgr% backup --purge -c “%Cluster%” -u Administrator -p “%passwd%” -a “%ArchivePath%” -r %BackupSet%

Which works great, although it basically appears to be creating a full backup each day as our cluster data size (on disk) is 64GB


Any ideas what’s going on here? We don’t add much data to our database on a daily basis. So we would expect the first full backup to be 64’ish GB, then each daily incremental to be a gigabyte or two (tops).

2

We found an issue which affected Couchbase 4.6.1, 4.6.0, and 4.5.x which can cause the backups to not be completely incremental. There is not data loss as a result of this issue (https://issues.couchbase.com/browse/MB-23105), but as you mentioned the backups consume extra disk space since they are not fully incremental. The issue was fixed in 4.6.2 and we will be releasing a maintenance patch for 4.5.1 shortly. If you’re on Couchbase 4.6.x can you try the cbbackupmgr from this release. If is compatible with all 4.6.x releases.

3

Thanks Mike, do you have a rough estimate on timing for when the patch will release for 4.5.1?

Also just to be clear on the issue, you said “not fully incremental” - In our case, it’s not incremental at all. Subsequent backups look to be as big (or bigger) than the original full backup.

4

We have the patch for 4.5.1 ready now so it’s just a matter or releasing it. I’m working with our PM team right now, but we don’t have an official date yet. Also, it’s possible in your case that a full backup is happening each time, but what I typically see is that there a certain percentage of the vbuckets we backup up are being fully backed up and the others are backing up incrementally. This percentage can vary though and it could be that all vbuckets need to be fully backed up.

One thing you can do in order to ensure that you are running into the issue I linked is to create a bug on Jira (issues.couchbase.com) and attach your backup and server logs. Using these I can verify that your issue is the same as the one above.

5

Should we reach out to Support to get the patch for 4.5.1?

6

Yes, please reach out to support to get the patch. They should have it now. Also, I was mistaken and the patch will not be released publicly on the website.