mariabackup using IBM Spectrum Protect

2 min readOct 21, 2021

There are several ways to protect MariaDB databases, where we are going to focus on using the mariabackup tool.

1.Install the IBM Spectrum Protect Client API

# rpm -ivh gsk*.rpm
# rpm –ivh *api*.rpm

# dpkg -i gsk*.deb
# dpkg –i *api*.deb

2. Install the SPFS software

# rpm -ivh spfs*.rpm
# rpm –ivh spictera*.rpm

# dpkg -i spfs*.deb
# dpkg –i spictera*.deb

3. Configure the Spectrum Protect client

# vi /opt/Tivoli/tsm/client/api/bin64/dsm.sys
SERVERNAME spfs
TCPSERVERADDRESS tsm.backupserver.com
ERRORLOGNAME /var/log/dsmerror_spfs.log

4. Register the node on the backup server

TSM> REGISTER NODE SPFS secret DOMAIN=SPFS

5. Configure the SPFS file system

5.1 Create option file

# echo SERVERNAME spfs > /etc/spfs/dsm.opt

5.2 set initial password

# setpassword /etc/spfs/TSM.PWD
secret

5.3 Create spfs configuration

# vi /etc/spfs/spfs.opt
MOUNTPOINT /backup
NODENAME spfs
NODEPWDFILE /etc/spfs/TSM.PWD
OPTIONFILE /etc/spfs/dsm.opt

6. mounting the SPFS file system

# mkdir /backup
# mount.spfs /backup

You are now ready to start using Spectrum Protect as a file system, storing and retrieving backup data of MariaDB

Backing up MariaDB

# mariadb-backup — backup — user=backup— password=secret — parallel=10 — stream=xbstream > /backup/bu.stream

Restoring from backup

Step 1: stop MariaDB

# systemctl stop mariadb

Step 2: remove data files

# cd /var/lib/mysql
# rm -rf *

Step 3: restore data files

# mbstream -x < /backup/bu.stream

Step 4: prepare

# mariadb-backup — prepare — target-dir=$(pwd)

Step 5: change ownerships of files

# chown -R mysql.mysql .

Step 6: start MariaDB

# systemctl start mariadb

If you want to restore from an older version, than one can change step 3 to the version of interest.

Eg previous backup version

# mbstream -x < “/backup/bu.stream(-1)”