Aspera Shares Automated Backups

Introduction

IBM Aspera Shares is a web application that enables companies to share content in the form of files and directories of any size within their organization or with external customers and partners. Shares are powered by IBM Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server, which features the Aspera Node API, a daemon providing REST-enabled file operations, and a transfer management API. 

This article describes how to configure automated backups of the Aspera Shares environment. The files output from this backup is all that is needed to restore Shares in case of a catastrophic event. 

Note: Shares HA (High Availability) is not covered here as backup steps are different for HA. The HA Configuration steps already include automated backup configuration instructions. 

Files to Backup After Shares Installation:

The following files may be needed if the Shares Web Application needs to move to a new server. It is suggested to store these off the server. These only need to be collected one time or again if they are updated/changed: 

/opt/aspera/shares/etc/nginx/cert.key and cert.pem 
/opt/aspera/shares/u/shares/config/aspera/secret.rb 
/opt/aspera/shares/u/shares/config/initializers/secret_token.rb 
/opt/aspera/shares/u/stats-collector/etc/keystore.jks 
/opt/aspera/shares/u/stats-collector/etc/persistence.xml 

Shares Backing up via Command Line

The following script needs to be called as root. The destination path specified needs to exist (the backup script will not create it): 
/opt/aspera/shares/u/setup/bin/backup /path/to/backup/directory 

Shares Automated Backup

This example will collect a daily backup of Shares at midnight. Then at 12:01 AM remove backups that are older than 14 days from the target directory /opt/aspera/shares/backup directory.  

Please sign in to the server as root: 
Create the target directory (you can use a different path if you choose): 
mkdir –p /opt/aspera/shares/backup 

Schedule a crontab job to run the backup and cleanup by adding the following lines to the root crontab. Open crontab in edit mode: 
crontab –e 

Add the following lines: 

#Shares: Auto Daily Backup 
0 0 * * * /opt/aspera/shares/u/setup/bin/backup /opt/aspera/shares/backup >/dev/null 2>&1 

# Delete Shares Backups older then 14 days 
1 0 * * * /usr/bin/find /opt/aspera/shares/backup/ -type d -mtime +14 -exec rm -r {} \; 

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