Bug 1018357

Summary:	[RFE] "rhc snapshot save": allow taking snapshots without server going down
Product:	OpenShift Online	Reporter:	Gerrit Hübbers <gerrit.huebbers>
Component:	Containers	Assignee:	Jhon Honce <jhonce>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	libra bugs <libra-bugs>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	2.x	CC:	gerrit.huebbers, jkaur
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	2.x
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2013-10-11 20:57:20 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description Gerrit Hübbers 2013-10-11 18:40:41 UTC

$ rhc --version
rhc 1.14.7

Description of problem:
"rhc" allows taking snapshots of an application like so:

$ rhc snapshot save -a myapp

During snapshot-taking time, the application will go offline. Someone visiting the application with a web browser will see the following message

------------BEGIN QUOTE-----------------
Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Apache/2.2.15 (Red Hat) Server at myapp-myaccount.rhcloud.com Port 80
------------END QUOTE-----------------

This behavior makes my application inaccessible for a significant time (snapshot-taking and restarting the app takes around 10 minutes in my case).

Besides periodic backups, I use the "rhc snapshot" functionality whenever I migrate my application to a new gear. 

Therefore, I'd be great if "rhc snapshot save" could somehow take an application snapshot without letting the server go down.

Comment 1 Jhon Honce 2013-10-11 20:57:20 UTC

The application is shutdown during snapshots and restores to ensure the application is a a known state.

Since you have ssh access to the gears making up the application you  could use rsync or scp to do an live-backup.  Knowing that any active databases or data stores could be corrupt during the restore.