Disaster recovery of a CubeBackup instance.

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A server crash can be an unpredictable disaster that can happen at any time. In some unfortunate cases, your CubeBackup installation may be completely unrecoverable. For example:

• Your CubeBackup instance is running on a local server and backing up to a NAS or your company's data center, but the disk on your local server becomes corrupted and all data is lost.
• You deploy CubeBackup on a cloud VM and back up to private cloud storage. The cloud VM is accidentally deleted or terminated.

In both of these cases, it should still be possible to connect a new CubeBackup installation to your old backups, as long as you have a copy of the encryption key file. Otherwise, you have to start the backups again from the very beginning.

Step-by-step instructions

1. Install CubeBackup on a new machine, or in a different directory on the original machine.

2. Before going through the configuration wizard, copy the encryption key file to <installation directory>/db/keys.json.

   Tips:
   (1) If you did not choose to encrypt your backup data in your previous instance, this step is unnecessary.
   (2) For Linux and docker users, please change the ownership of the encryption key file to cbuser.

   sudo chown cbuser:cbuser /opt/cubebackup/db/keys.json

3. In Step 2, choose the same Storage type and enter the storage location of your previous backup data.

   Tips:
   (1) If the backup data is stored in cloud storage, you can simply enter the same bucket or container name. If you are using local storage, please ensure that the backup folder location points to your original backup folder (e.g.\\192.168.8.22\backups\cubebackup_data).
   (2) CubeBackup will regenerate a new data index based on your original backup data.
   (3) Make sure that if you originally encrypted your backups that the Encrypt backups box is checked! If your backups were not encrypted, this box must be unchecked.
   

4. In Step 3, enter the domain and administrator of your Google Workspace.

   Tip: If you managed multiple domains in your previous CubeBackup instance, you can choose any one of them.

5. If your previous project in Google Cloud Platform is still accessible, you may go to the same GCP project in which you created the service account and generate a new key file to upload directly. Otherwise, please create a new service account.

   If you've created the service account using CubeBackup Service Account Generator, you can log in with the same Google account, and download another key file for the original servic/e account.

6. You can click Next and skip Step 4 if CubeBackup is using the same service account in Step 3 as the previous instance, which has already been authorized in your Google Workspace domain. If you need to authorize a new service account, please follow the instructions at Authorize domain-wide access.

   Tip: If you managed multiple domains in your previous CubeBackup instance, you will need to repeat the authorization step in the Google Admin Console for each domain.

7. Based on your previous backup data and configuration, CubeBackup should have automatically selected the original users and shared drives into the backup list for you. You can look through the list and click Next if you are satisfied.

8. In the last step, you will need to assign a CubeBackup administrator.

9. After logging in to CubeBackup, all backup data and operation histories should be displayed in the web console exactly as before. You may wish to restore a test file to confirm that everything is functioning properly.

Please note that if you cannot access the encryption key, or if the backup storage directory is unavailable, you will have to begin the backup from scratch.

If you need any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].