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Perform a Cold Backup for a Stack Running with Docker Compose#

In this tutorial, we're going to guide you through performing a cold backup of a stack running with Docker Compose for TheHive. A cold backup involves fully stopping TheHive and its related services before making a copy of your data. While it requires downtime, this method ensures the highest level of data consistency.

Cold vs. hot backups and restores

Before proceeding, ensure you fully understand the implications of performing a cold backup and restore. This process requires stopping all services to ensure data integrity and is available only for standalone servers.

Best practices for safe backup and restore

  • Coordinate your Apache Cassandra, Elasticsearch, and file storage backups to run at the same time. Using automation like a cron job helps minimize the chance of inconsistencies between components.
  • Before relying on these backups in a real incident, test the full backup and restore flow in a staging environment. It’s the only way to make sure everything works as expected.
  • Ensure you have an up-to-date backup before starting the restore operation, as errors during the restoration could lead to data loss.

Prerequisites#

This solution assumes you are following the Running TheHive with Docker guide to run your application stack.

Before starting, ensure you have:

  • Sufficient storage space for the backup.
  • Administrative privileges to stop and start Docker Compose services.
  • Familiarity with the locations of your mapped volumes and data directories.

This step-by-step procedure ensures a safe and consistent backup of your Docker Compose stack, enabling quick recovery in case of an issue or migration to a new environment. For more details on restoring these backups, refer to the restore procedure for Docker Compose.

Step 1: Stop the services#

Stop all services to ensure data consistency and prevent any changes during the backup process.

docker compose down

Step 2: Copy files in a backup folder#

Copy volumes and mapped directories on the host machine, which contain your data, configurations, and logs.

For example, on the host server, create a folder on a dedicated NFS volume named /opt/backups and copy all files preserving their permissions.

Tips

#!/bin/bash

## ============================================================
## BACKUP SCRIPT FOR THEHIVE APPLICATION STACK
## ============================================================
## PURPOSE:
## This script creates a backup of TheHive application stack, 
## including its configuration, data, and logs. It is designed 
## to ensure data is preserved for restoration purposes.
##
## IMPORTANT:
## - This script must be run with appropriate permissions to read all data 
##   and write to the backup folders.
## - Ensure sufficient storage is available in the backup location to avoid 
##   partial or failed backups.
## - Services (Elasticsearch, Cassandra, and TheHive) will be stopped during 
##   the backup process to ensure data integrity.
##
## DISCLAIMER:
## - Users are strongly advised to test this script in a non-production 
##   environment to ensure it works as expected with their specific 
##   infrastructure and application stack before using it in production.
## - The maintainers of this script are not responsible for any data loss, 
##   corruption, or issues arising from the use of this script during your 
##   backup or restore processes. Proceed at your own risk.
##
## USAGE:
## 1. Update the variables at the start of the script to reflect your setup:
##    - BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER: Root folder where backups will be stored.
##    - BACKUP_TO_RESTORE: Name of the backup folder to restore.
## 2. Run the script using the following command:
##    `bash ./scripts/backup.sh`
##
## ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
## Refer to the official documentation for detailed instructions and 
## additional information: https://docs.strangebee.com/thehive/operations/backup-restore/backup/cold-backup/docker-compose.md.
##
## WARNING:
## - This script stops Nginx, Elasticsearch, Cassandra, and TheHive services, 
##   performs the backup, and then restarts the services.
## - Don't modify the rest of the script unless necessary.
##
## ============================================================
## DO NOT MODIFY ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
## ============================================================

# Display help message
if [[ "$1" == "--help" || "$1" == "-h" ]]
then
    echo "Usage: $0 [BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER]"
    echo
    echo "This script performs a backup of application data, including configurations, files, and logs."
    echo
    echo "Options:"
    echo "  DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH  Optional. Specify the path of the folder with the docker-compose.yml."
    echo "                      If not provided, you will be prompted for a folder, with a default of '.'."
    echo "  BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER  Optional. Specify the root folder where backups will be stored."
    echo "                      If not provided, you will be prompted for a folder, with a default of './backup'."
    echo
    echo "Examples:"
    echo "  $0 /path/to/docker-compose-folder /path/to/backup  Perform backup with specified root folder."
    echo "  $0                 Prompt for docker compose folder and backup root folder."
    exit 0
fi

## Checks if the first argument is provided.
## If it is, the script uses it as the value for BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER
## If no argument is passed, the script prompts the user to enter a value
## 
if [[ -z "$1" ]]
then
    read -p "Enter the folder path including your docker compose file [default: ./]: " DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH
    DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH=${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH:-"."}
else
    DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH="$1"
fi

if [[ -e "${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/docker-compose.yml" ]]
then
    echo "Path to your docker compose file: ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/docker-compose.yml"
else
    { echo "Docker compose file not found in ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}"; exit 1; }
fi


if [[ -z "$2" ]]
then
    read -p "Enter the backup root folder [default: ./backup]: " BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER
    BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER=${BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER:-"./backup"}
else
    BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER="$2"
fi


DATE="$(date +"%Y%m%d-%H%M%z" | sed 's/+/-/')"
BACKUP_FOLDER="${BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER}/${DATE}"

## Stop services
docker compose -f ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/docker-compose.yml stop

## Create the backup directory
mkdir -p "${BACKUP_FOLDER}"  || { echo "Creating backup folder failed"; exit 1; }
echo "Created backup folder: ${BACKUP_FOLDER}"

## Define the log file and start logging
LOG_FILE="${BACKUP_ROOT_FOLDER}/backup_log_${DATE}.log"
exec &> >(tee -a "$LOG_FILE")

## Prepare folders tree
mkdir -p ${BACKUP_FOLDER}/{thehive,cassandra,elasticsearch,nginx,certificates}
echo "Created folder structure under ${BACKUP_FOLDER}"

## Copy TheHive data
echo "Starting TheHive backup..."
rsync -aW --no-compress ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/thehive/ ${BACKUP_FOLDER}/thehive || { echo "TheHive backup failed"; exit 1; }
echo "TheHive backup completed."

## Copy Cassandra data
echo "Starting Cassandra backup..."
rsync -aW --no-compress ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/cassandra/ ${BACKUP_FOLDER}/cassandra || { echo "Cassandra backup failed"; exit 1; }
echo "Cassandra backup completed."

## Copy Elasticsearch data
echo "Starting Elasticsearch backup..."
rsync -aW --no-compress ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/elasticsearch/ ${BACKUP_FOLDER}/elasticsearch || { echo "Elasticsearch config backup failed"; exit 1; }
echo "Elasticsearch backup completed."

## Copy Nginx certificates
echo "Starting backup of Nginx and certificates..."
rsync -aW --no-compress ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/nginx/ ${BACKUP_FOLDER}/nginx || { echo " Backup of Nginx failed"; exit 1; }
rsync -aW --no-compress ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/certificates/ ${BACKUP_FOLDER}/certificates || { echo " Backup of Nginx and certificates failed"; exit 1; }
echo "Backup of certificates completed."

## Restart services
echo "Restarting services..."
docker compose up -d -f ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/docker-compose.yml

echo "Backup process completed at: $(date)"

Step 3: Validate the backup#

Check the backup folder and verify that the data has been copied correctly.

Step 4: Restart all services#

Use docker compose up -d -f ${DOCKER_COMPOSE_PATH}/docker-compose.yml to restart all services with the command line.

Next steps