Heroku Buildpack: heroku-mysql-backup-s3

Capture Postgres or MySQL DB in Heroku and copy it to s3 bucket. Buildpack contains AWS CLI.

Installation

Add buildpack to your Heroku app

heroku buildpacks:add https://github.com/plymouthsoftware/heroku-db-backup-s3 --app <your_app>

Buildpacks are scripts that are run when your app is deployed.

Configure environment variables

$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=someaccesskey --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=supermegasecret --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=eu-central-1 --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_S3_BUCKET_PATH=your-bucket --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_ENC_KEY=somethingverysecret --app <your_app>

• In future release (maybe) will use heroku-toolbelt

$ heroku config:add HEROKU_TOOLBELT_APP=<your_app> --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add HEROKU_TOOLBELT_API_EMAIL=sss --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add HEROKU_TOOLBELT_API_PASSWORD=ddd --app <your_app>

For Postgres:

Go to settings page of your Heroku application and add Config Var DBURL_FOR_BACKUP with the same value as var DATABASE_URL. This is our DB connection string.

For MySQL:

You will need to install a mysql buildpack to make the mysqldump command available. For example:

$ heroku buildpacks:add https://github.com/daetherius/heroku-buildpack-mysql --app <your_app>

Then configure the following:

$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_HOST=your-db-host --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_USER=your-db-user --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_PASSWORD=your-db-password --app <your_app>
$ heroku config:add DB_BACKUP_DATABASE=your-db-name --app <your_app>

One-time runs

You can run the backup task as a one-time task:

$ heroku run bash /app/vendor/backup.sh -db <somedbname> --app <your_app>

Scheduler

Add addon scheduler to your app.

$ heroku addons:create scheduler --app <your_app>

Create scheduler.

$ heroku addons:open scheduler --app <your_app>

Now in browser Add new Job. Paste next line: bash /app/vendor/backup.sh -db <somedbname> and configure FREQUENCY. Paramenter db is used for naming convention when we create backups. We don't use it for dumping database with the same name.

Doesn't work?

In case if scheduler doesn't run your task, check logs using this e.g.:

$ heroku logs -t  --app <your_app> | grep 'backup.sh'
$ heroku logs --ps scheduler.x --app <you_app>

Restoring

Can't decrypt backups

Different versions of openssl can cause decryption to fail. If you receive an error when trying to decrypt, you can run an alternative version of openssl inside a Docker container, e.g:

$ docker run --rm -it -v /path/to/backup:/backups -w /backups alpine:3.17 /bin/ash
$$ apk add --update openssl
$$ openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in /backups/your-encrypted-backup.gz.enc -out /backups/decrypted-backup.gz
$$ exit