rear-automated-testing

Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) Automated Testing is using Vagrant and standard GNU/Linux boxes to deploy one server and one client virtual machine (VM), and besides a recover VM is also created, but not provisioned. The main goal of this project is to foresee in a simple way to test the latest snapshot release of ReaR without too many manual interactions by doing a full backup with an automated restore into the recover VM.

In short we start the client and server VM via vagrant, and do a provisioning if required so that the server VM is capable of being a NFS server, PXE server and TFTP server. Then, we install the latest ReaR snapshot in the client VM and run a full backup using the NETFS backup method (with the help of tar or bareos). The tar archive is stored on the server VM and in the same time the PXE environment is configured on the server VM as well (when using KVM/libvirt), or a PXE environment is configured on the host system when using virtualbox.. When the ReaR backup is completed we halt the client VM and start the recover VM and do a full restore of the client content. Once the restore is completed the recover VM reboot automatically.

Clone this Git repository

$ git clone https://github.com/gdha/rear-automated-testing.git

Execute the automated ReaR Recovery test

Select the GNU/Linux OS to test by going into the proper directory. However, initially we only have centos7, but more will follow over time (and do not forget it goes much faster with sponsoring - Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 16.04 were added with sponsoring).

$ cd rear-automated-testing
$ sudo ./rear-automated-test.sh -h
Usage: rear-automated-test.sh [-d distro] [-b <boot method>] [-s <stable rear version>] [-p provider] [-c rear-config-file.conf] -vh
        -d: The distribution to use for this automated test (default: centos7)
        -b: The boot method to use by our automated test (default: PXE)
        -s: The <stable rear version> is the specific version we want to test, e.g. 2.3 (default: <empty> )
        -p: The vagrant <provider> to use (default: virtualbox)
        -c: The ReaR config file we want to use with this test (default: PXE-booting-example-with-URL-style.conf)
        -l: The ReaR test logs top directory (default: /export/rear-tests/logs)
        -h: This help message.
        -v: Revision number of this script.

Comments:
--------
<distro>: select the distribution you want to use for these testings
<boot method>: select the rescue image boot method (default PXE) - supported are PXE and ISO
<stable rear version>: select the specific version to test, e.g. 2.3. Empty means use the latest unstable version
<provider>: as we use vagrant we need to select the provider to use (virtualbox, libvirt)
<rear-config-file.conf>: is the ReaR config file we would like to use to drive the test scenario with (optional with PXE)
<logs directory>: is the direcory where the logs are kept of each run including the rear recovery log of the recover VM

Using KVM/libvirt

To use this tool on a KVM/libvirt Linux system and as CentOS7 and PXE are the default we only require one parameter and that is -p libvirt as virtualbox was choosen as the default provider. Be aware, this only works under Linux.

Using VirtualBox

To use this tool on a VirtualBox with Linux or OS/X system and to test of GNU/Linux operating system CentOS 7, Ubuntu 14.04 or Ubuntu 16.04 and with boot methods PXE or ISO. The tool will try to set-up an FTPboot area on the host system itself. However, it is imported that the hosts system is a NFS server as the client VM will try to mount the TFTboot area. Why do we need the host system? That is because VirtualBox uses a NAT network to PXE boot from and that is always pointing the host system (a pity we cannot use the server VM).

To setup a NFS server (when using VirtualBox) on the host system create a /etc/exports file that looks like:

Linux:

/export 192.168.0.0/16(rw,no_root_squash) 10.0.2.0/24(rw,insecure,no_root_squash) 127.0.0.1(rw,insecure,no_root_squash)
/root/.config/VirtualBox/TFTP 192.168.0.0/16(rw,no_root_squash) 10.0.2.0/24(rw,insecure,no_root_squash) 127.0.0.1(rw,insecure,no_root_squash)

OS/X:

/   -alldirs  -rw  -maproot=0:0 -sec=sys:krb5  -network 192.168.33.0 -mask 255.255.255.0

Use the showmount -e command to check if the export was successfull.

ReaR configuration files

There are several ReaR configuration files available under the templates directory.