Back up and restore PE

Use the Puppet Enterprise (PE) backup tool to create regular backups of your installation. Then, if you migrate your primary server to a new operating system or replace your primary server hardware, you can restore your installation. The backup and restore process can also be useful for troubleshooting or for recovering your installation after a system failure.

The PE backup tool is designed for backing up and restoring standard or large PE installations. For extra-large installations, consider using an alternative backup or snapshot process.

If you have a standard or large PE installation, you can implement the following backup and restore process:

  1. Use the puppet-backup create command to back up the primary server.
  2. When necessary, use the puppet-backup restore command to restore the primary server and your PE infrastructure.

    Disaster recovery consideration

    If your PE installation includes disaster recovery, then after restoring the primary server, you must remove the existing replica and provision a new one.

When upgrading your operating system to a new major version, you must:
  1. Back up PE on your existing primary server.
  2. Install a new PE primary server on a node with the upgraded operating system.
  3. Restore the PE backup on the new primary server.
  4. For installations with compilers:
    • Remove existing compilers and install new compilers on the upgraded operating system.
  5. For installations with disaster recovery:
    • Remove the existing replica and provision a new replica on the upgraded operating system.
You cannot use the puppet-backup command to back up or restore the following components:
  • The replica of your primary server
  • Compilers
  • Secret keys