Cloned from launchpad blueprint https://blueprints.launchpad.net/cinder/+spec/incremental-backup.

Description:

Cinder backup API does not have support for incremental backup. As the size of the volume grows and the changes to volume between backups tend to be low, performing full backups on the volume may become resource intensive.  This proposal suggests following flags to existing backup api to support incremental backup functionality.

Enhance current backup api to include —incr option
cinder backup-create <volumeid> —incr <full backup container>

 —incr option specified for incremental backups. To keep the API implementation simple, we only support incremental from the last full backup. In order to keep the deltas manageable size, user can periodically take full backups and then incrementals. 

The other option is snapshot based backups. To support snapshot based backups, the backup api is changed as follows:

cinder backup-create <volumeid> —snapshot 
This cli takes a snapshot of the volume and performs the backup of the snapshot. The volume can remain online and in-use for the duration of the operation. At the end of the backup, the snapshot is deleted.

cinder backup-create <volumeid> —snapshot —incr <full backup container>
This cli takes a snapshot of the volume and uploads only the changes since last backup to swift. Again at the end of the backup, the snapshot will be deleted.

Specification URL (additional information):

None