Restoring a site from a backup¶

Restoring from the Acquia Cloud interface¶

To restore a nightly database backup using the Acquia Cloud interface, perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Site Factory Management Console.
2. Identify the website for which you want to restore a database, and then point to the Information icon to display the DB Identifier value.
3. Identify the database backups matching the DB Identifier value from the previous step, and then perform the restoration as described in Downloading, restoring, or deleting backups.

Restoring from the command line¶

To restore a nightly database backup for a single website from the command line, complete the following steps:

1. SSH into your environment.

2. Navigate to your backups directory with the following command:

   cd /mnt/files/${AH_SITE_GROUP}.${AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT}/backups
   

3. Create a new database backup of the website you intend to restore by running the following command (where [SITEURL] is the URL of your website):

   drush -r /var/www/html/${AH_SITE_GROUP}.${AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT}/docroot  --uri=[SITEURL] sql-dump --gzip --result-file=/mnt/files/${AH_SITE_GROUP}.${AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT}/backups/site-backup.sql
   

4. Confirm a valid backup exists by executing the following command to confirm a file matching the name site-backup.sql now exists in the directory:

   ls "`pwd`/site-backup.sql.gz" /mnt/files/${AH_SITE_GROUP}.${AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT}/backups/site-backup.sql.gz
   

5. Identify the database name and site path values by executing the following command, substituting the [SITEURL] value with the URL of the website you want to restore:

   drush -r /var/www/html/${AH_SITE_GROUP}.${AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT}/docroot --uri=[SITEURL] st | grep -E "Database name|Site path"
   
   Database name : customeracsdb123102
   Site path : sites/g/files/marketing101
   

   In the preceding output, your database name is customeracsdb123102 and your path is marketing101. You will need these values in the following steps.

6. Identify the file name of the database backup by using grep in your backups directory to search for the available database backup files matching the site path you identified previously, replacing [PATH] with your path:

   ls -lath | grep [PATH] | head
   

   The command returns a list of the database backups available for restoration.

   -r--r----- 1 customername www-data 12M Dec 17 08:16 01live-marketing101-customerdb123102-2017-12-17.sql.gz
   -r--r----- 1 customername www-data 11M Dec 16 08:16 01live-marketing101-customerdb123102-2017-12-16.sql.gz
   -r--r----- 1 customername www-data 11M Dec 15 08:16 01live-marketing101-customerdb123102-2017-12-15.sql.gz
   

7. Run the following command to extract the filename of the backup you want to restore, replacing filename.sql.gz with the name of your file:

   gunzip filename.sql.gz
   

8. Ensure the .sql file extracted correctly, and check the full path of the resulting .sql file by executing the following command, replacing filename.sql with the name of your file:

   ls "`pwd`/filename.sql"
   
   /mnt/files/${AH_SITE_GROUP}.${AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT}/backups/01live-marketing101-customerdb123102-2017-12-17.sql
   

   If the file system path to your newly-extracted .sql file is not in the output of your command, confirm the file extracted successfully before continuing to restore the backup. If unsure, contact Acquia Support.

9. Drop the existing database.

   Important

   Dropping the database destroys all data stored in the website’s current database. After executing the command, your website will be inaccessible until the database restoration completes.

   To drop the existing database, execute the following command (where [SITEURL] is the URL of your website):

   drush -r /var/www/html/${AH_SITE_GROUP}.${AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT}/docroot --uri=[SITEURL] sql-drop
   

   Drush will display the following confirmation message to confirm you intend to drop the database:

   Do you really want to drop all tables in the database
   customeracsdb1231023? (y/n):
   

   If the database name matches the database name you identified in Identify the database name and site path values, press Y to drop the database.

10. Restore the database backup you identified by running the following command, using the full path to the .sql file you confirmed when preparing the database backup file for restoration:

    drush -r /var/www/html/${AH_SITE_GROUP}.${AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT}/docroot --uri=[SITEURL] sqlc < /full/path/to/backup/filename.sql
    

    where:

    • [SITEURL] - The full URL of your website
    • /full/path/to/backup/filename.sql - The full file system path to your .sql backup file

Your database restoration is now complete.