Note
The instructions in this section do not apply to environments running on Cloud Next technologies. Use Acquia CLI, the Cloud Platform user interface, or Cloud Platform API v2 to download database backups on Cloud Next environments.
An environment’s Databases page in the Cloud Platform interface lists recent database backups for the environment. You can also use SSH and command line tools to confirm which database backups exist and download them directly from your environment, if desired.
Acquia recommends using command line tools to download backups if they are large (over 1 GB), since large downloads over HTTPS from the Cloud Platform interface may not complete successfully.
To run commands on a Cloud Platform environment, you must have the necessary
permission. For non-production environments (dev or stage), you must
have the Add SSH key to non-production environments permission. For
production environments (prod), you must have the Add SSH key to
production environments permission. By default, administrators and users with
the Team Lead or Senior Developer roles have these permissions and users
with the Developer role do not. For more information, see
Working with roles and permissions.
To view which backups are actually available on an environment:
Connect to your infrastructure using SSH. For example, you can use a command similar to the following:
Change directory to the /backups directory for the environment.
/mnt/files/[sitename].dev/backups/mnt/files/[sitename].test/backups/mnt/files/[sitename].prod/backupsIf you want to view backups for the Development environment, use a command similar to the following:
cd /mnt/files/clouddocs.dev/backups
Run the ls command to determine which backup files are present.
You can download the backup files you want using command line tools.
The following is a set of examples for downloading database backups with several command-line tools. Be sure to either replace or set the following variables in the examples:
sitename: Your application’s
sitename.env - The Cloud Platform environment. For most applications,
one of prod (Production), test (Staging), or dev (Development).server: Your server name, which you can find on the Infrastructure
page. For example, ded-123.You can use any GUI tool that supports these protocols, such as Fetch or WinSCP.
To download with SFTP, use a command like the following:
sftp [sitename].env]@[server].prod.hosting.acquia.com:/mnt/files/[sitename]/backups/yourdatabase-date.sql.gz /path/to/your/backup/folder
To download all your backups at once, replace
yourdatabase-date.sql.gz with an asterisk (*). You can also use SFTP
in the interactive mode by omitting everything after hosting.acquia.com.
The -i flag tells SFTP to use a specific key. Other useful flags are
-b (batch mode) and -v (verbose, used for debugging issues).
To download with SCP, use a command similar to the following:
scp -r [sitename].[env]@[server].prod.hosting.acquia.com:/mnt/files/[sitename]/backups/ /path/to/your/backup/folder
The -r flag recursively copies the specified directory if you’re
using this command to copy files from your docroot. For example, this
command will copy everything in subdirectories as well. Depending on your
version of SCP, this may include symbolic links, so use caution if there
are symbolic links to your files directories in the directory tree where
you’re using -r.
To download with rsync, use a command like the following:
rsync -avz -e "ssh -i ${KEY}" [sitename].[env]@[server].prod.hosting.acquia.com:/mnt/files/sitename/backups/ /path/to/your/backup/folder
The -a flag uses archive mode, which is a series of options under
one flag that attempt to preserve exactly as possible the file
structures being transferred. This includes copying symlinks as
symlinks, copying directories recursively, and preserving the
owner:group settings on files and directories. The -v flag provides
verbose output, useful in debugging or just keeping track of progress,
and -z compresses files during data transfer. The
-e "ssh -i ${KEY}" part tells rsync to use SSH to pass key
information. There are other options that can be passed in the -e
flag that can be useful for synchronizing data, such as
--ignore-existing (do not update files that already exist on the
receiving end) and --delete (delete files from the destination
directory that do not exist in the source directory).
Important
A full list of options is available, but be careful to practice on non-essential data, especially if using any of the synchronization or delete options.
To restore the database in a Cloud Platform environment from a backup file:
Ensure that your database backup is unzipped and that it is in
.sql format.
Drop your existing database, using the drush sql-drop command:
drush @[site].[env] sql-drop [--uri=my.site.com]
where:
[site] is the name of your application on Cloud Platform.[env] is the environment into which you’re importing your
database. Acceptable values are dev (Development), test
(Staging), and prod (Production).[db_name] is the name of your database. Use the database name
shown on the Databases page for the environment, not an
environment-specific name. For example, if your site name is
example, your default database name will probably be
example, and you should use that rather than an
environment-specific name like exampledev or exampletest.Run the following ah-db-import Drush command to restore your backup:
drush @[site].[env] ah-db-import /path/to/backup/file
After your database has been restored, Cloud Platform displays the following message:
Imported into database successfully
For information about database backup locations, see Downloading backups from the command line.
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