Skyve provides a powerful backup and restore facility that offers a unique range of features.

Backup and restore

Feature Description
platform independent e.g. backups taken on Windows systems can be restored to Linux systems and vice versa
database independent e.g. backups taken from a system using one database provider (e.g. MS SQL Server) can be restored to systems using another provider (e.g. Oracle, H2 or MySQL) and vice versa
includes structured and non-structured data backups include both SQL/relational/structured database data as well as non-structured/non-sql content items (note that structured and non-structured data are not necessarily guaranteed to be synchronised)
handles schema ‘drift’ Skyve offers a range of restore Pre-Process options to handle cases where a backup was taken from an application with version x domain model or schema and is restored to an application running version y and vice versa

A detailed set of steps and explanations is included in the Skyve User Guide including for:

  • Backup
  • Scheduling backups
  • Cyclic retention
  • Restore
  • Recovery options

We strongly recommend developers take the time to read and understand this feature.

NOTE that Skyve backup and restore is an application wide function - across all customer data segments. If your application is a multi-tenant SaaS application, you should consider carefully both backup and restore options.

Customising Skyve backup and restore

The code for Skyve backup and restore is located in the admin module to enable developers to customise where required.

Without going into details, some customisation options to consider are:

  • automatically obfuscating data from Production systems (i.e. where the environment setting in the .json application settings file is null) as part of the backup process
  • blocking/disabling downloading backups from a Production system (for example, by setting the visible condition on the Download Backup button to "false"
  • limiting restore options to those that are appropriate for your method of working

Handling agile development and schema ‘drift’

The Skyve backup and restore capability has been developed with agile development in mind, and restore options provide ways to handle differences between the current schema of the application and the backup being restored.

For an explanation of these options, refer to the Skyve User Guide.

Uploading large backups

Wildfly controls the size limits on file uploads (for example to upload large backup zip files).

To control this you can add max-post-size="4294967296" to the wildfly default http-listener

For example:

<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:8.0" default-server="default-server" default-virtual-host="default-host" default-servlet-container="default" default-security-domain="other" statistics-enabled="${wildfly.undertow.statistics-enabled:${wildfly.statistics-enabled:false}}">
    <buffer-cache name="default"/>
    <server name="default-server">
        <http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" max-post-size="4294967296" redirect-socket="https" enable-http2="true"/>
        <https-listener name="https" socket-binding="https" security-realm="ApplicationRealm" enable-http2="true"/>
        <host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
            <location name="/" handler="welcome-content"/>
            <http-invoker security-realm="ApplicationRealm"/>
        </host>
    </server>
    <servlet-container name="default">
        <jsp-config/>
        <websockets/>
    </servlet-container>
    <handlers>
        <file name="welcome-content" path="${jboss.home.dir}/welcome-content"/>
    </handlers>
</subsystem>

Configurating the Backup Location

By default, Skyve backups are stored in the content folder in the location specified in the application’s json property file. These are stored in a <customerName>_backup within the content folder, so that each customer has a separate backup with data they have access to.

Cloud Backups

From version 6.0 (8.2.3 for multi-tenant applications), Skyve also supports cloud/offsite backups via Microsoft Azure blob storage. Enabling this requires signing up for a paid Microsoft Azure subscription, and making some minor changes to your application configuration.

Note: these instructions are current as at February 2023 and the steps and/or screenshots may no longer reflect the Azure portal.

Create an Azure storage account

  • visit portal.azure.com and sign in or create an account
  • if you do not already have an active billing subscription
    • start with free trial if you do not already have a subscription
    • follow the steps to verify your identity and enter payment details to create a billing account
    • once complete, click Home
  • click Storage Accounts under Azure Services, or if not listed there, search for it, then select it

Storage Account search

  • click Create
  • select your Subscription for billing
  • select a Resource group for the backups, or click Create new if you do not have one
    • enter a name, e.g. SkyveAppBackups, then click OK
  • Enter a Storage account name, e.g. <appname>backup
  • Select the Region for your backup
  • Keep performance and redundancy defaults
  • click Next
  • scroll to the bottom of the Advanced screen
    • under Access tier, change from Hot to Cool
    • click Next

Cool storage

  • keep defaults on the Networking screen and click Next (we will change these later)
  • keep defaults on the Data protection screen and click Next
  • keep defaults on the Encryption screen and click Next
  • leave tags blank unless you have any you would like to add (used for billing), then click Review
  • review all the settings, scroll all the way down, wait for final validation and click Create
  • when deployment is complete (this takes a couple of minutes), click Go to resource
  • in the menu on the left, scroll to Security + network, then select Networking
    • change Public network access to Enabled from selected virtual networks and IP addresses
    • Under Firewall, add the IP address of the server(s), e.g. UAT, Prod
    • Click Save
    • For further info securing the storage account, see the Azure docs
  • in the menu on the left, scroll to Security + networking, then select Access keys
    • under key1, click the Show button next to Connection string
    • click the Copy to clipboard icon at the end of the connection string, we will paste this into our Skyve application in a little bit

Access keys

Update your Skyve application

  • update the appropriate server or docker .json files within your project where:
    • ACCOUNT_NAME is the AccountName in the Storage account name from the Access Keys page
    • ACCOUNT_KEY is a Key from the Access Keys page
"backup": {
    "externalBackupClass": "org.skyve.impl.backup.AzureBlobStorageBackup",
    "connectionString": "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=ACCOUNT_NAME;AccountKey=ACCOUNT_KEY;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net",
    // name of the top-level backup directory in Azure, e.g. <applicationName>, this will be created if it does not exist
    "containerName": "<backup directory name>"
},
  • add the following dependency to your application’s pom.xml:

For Skyve 8.x.x

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.azure</groupId>
    <artifactId>azure-storage-blob</artifactId>
    <version>12.25.2</version>
</dependency>

For Skyve 9.x.x

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.azure</groupId>
    <artifactId>azure-storage-blob</artifactId>
    <version>12.26.1</version>
</dependency>

A single storage account may be used for multiple Skyve applications. By specifying a different containerName in the application’s .json, Skyve backup store the backups in a different directory for each application.

Once this is configured and up and running successfully, you should be able to see backups in your storage account via the Microsoft Azure Storage browser to confirm backups are working. When using an external backup class, Skyve will first perform the backup locally then upload it to Microsoft Azure, so sufficient disk space needs to be available to create an entire backup. When performing a restore, the backup is downloaded from Microsoft Azure, then restored locally.

⬆ back to top