Splunk® Phantom (Legacy)

Administer Splunk Phantom

backup and restore overview

includes a tool, ibackup.pyc, to back up and restore your data.

Regularly back up your deployment to safeguard your data in these cases:

  • To restore your deployment in the event of a disaster
    • Restore a lost or failed file share
    • Restore a lost or failed PostgreSQL database
  • To restore data from your deployment to another
    • Restore data from a Phantom instance or cluster to a new instance or cluster
    • Restore data from a standalone instance to a newly deployed cluster
    • Restore data from a clustered deployment to a standalone Phantom instance
    • Rebuild a Phantom cluster where the Phantom nodes have failed

Save your backups in a safe place, such as one that is not on the same disk, partition, or virtual machine as your Splunk Phantom instance.

Supported configurations

You can backup a deployment using any of these configurations:

  • A privileged, standalone instance
  • A privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • A privileged instance, external file shares
  • An unprivileged, standalone instance
  • An unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • An unprivileged instance, external file shares
  • A privileged cluster
  • An unprivileged cluster

You can build deployments from any supported installation method. See Install using the Amazon Marketplace Image in Install and Upgrade .

Backup types

The ibackup.pyc tool is based on the open source pgBackRest project, and it supports full and incremental backups. Differential backups are not supported.

  • A full backup includes all the file sets included in the What is in a full backup section on this page.
  • Incremental backups contain only the changes made to your deployment's PostgreSQL database and files since the last full or incremental backup was made.
  • A configuration only backup, which makes a backup of all the configurations. This type of backup requires downtime.

Backup levels and groups

Backups are created in <PHANTOM_HOME>/phantom/data/backup/. Each backup is part of a group, based on a full backup that is the base of the group, and is labeled by level.

For example, if the first backup on a instance is named "phantom_backup_group_0_level_0.tar". Then, the first incremental backup made is then named "phantom_backup_group_0_level_1.tar".

Each subsequent incremental backup in the same group increases by a level of one.

Additional full backups create a new group, and incremental backups based on that full backup start incrementing the level number.

When you begin a new group based on a new full backup, earlier groups stop incrementing. Further incremental backups belong to the new group.

You can control the number of backup groups by using the --set-full-backup-limit argument with ibackup.pyc.

You can change the number of backup groups by running the ibackup.pyc script with a new --set-full-backup-limit argument. If you set a lower limit, backup groups are deleted, starting with the oldest group.

For example, a deployment is configured for backup and restore using ibackup.pyc --set-full-backup-limit 3. After several weeks, three backup groups exist, each with a full backup and several incremental backups:

Group 0

  • phantom_backup_group_0_level_0.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_0_level_1.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_0_level_2.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_0_level_3.tar

Group 1

  • phantom_backup_group_1_level_0.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_1_level_1.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_1_level_2.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_1_level_3.tar

Group 2

  • phantom_backup_group_2_level_0.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_2_level_1.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_2_level_2.tar
    • phantom_backup_group_2_level_3.tar

A decision is made that the oldest backups are no longer required, so an administrator runs ibackup.pyc --set-full-backup-limit 3. When the next backup runs after the new full backup limit is set, Group 0 is deleted.

What is in a full backup?

A full backup of a instance contains the following file sets:

File set Files Backup path
misc_files Miscellaneous files used by . <PHANTOM_HOME>/keystore/private_key.pem

<PHANTOM_HOME>/www/phantom_ui/secret_key.py
<PHANTOM_HOME>/www/phantom_ui/secret_key.pyc
<PHANTOM_ETC>/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
<PHANTOM_HOME>/etc/cacerts.pem
<PHANTOM_HOME>/splunk/etc/apps/splunk_httpinput/local/inputs.conf
<PHANTOM_HOME>/etc/enable
<PHANTOM_HOME>/www/phantom_ui/auth_backends/saml2_xml

apps All apps, excluding app_states. <PHANTOM_HOME>/apps
ssl All etc/ssl contents. <PHANTOM_HOME>/etc/ssl
certs All certificates. <PHANTOM_HOME>/etc/certs
playbooks All playbooks, excluding playbook states. <PHANTOM_HOME>/scm
nginx_keys The NGINX SSH keys. <PHANTOM_VAR>/cache/nginx/.ssh
vault All vault contents, excluding files that are still streaming to storage. <PHANTOM_HOME>/vault
app_states All app states, excluding apps. <PHANTOM_HOME>/local_data/app_states
playbook_states All playbook states, excluding playbooks. <PHANTOM_HOME>/tmp

The directory <PHANTOM_HOME> represents:

  • On a privileged deployment the directory /opt/phantom.
  • On an unprivileged deployment using a virtual machine image or an Amazon Marketplace Image, the directory /opt/phantom.
  • On an unprivileged deployment using the installation TAR file the directory for the user account that runs .

How an incremental backup differs from a full backup

Incremental backups contain only changes to your deployment since the last backup was made.

Incremental backups are based on a group of backup files that begin with a full backup, then the backup files in sequence. The new file contains changes that were made since the previous backup.

An incremental backup cannot be used to restore a system on its own. It must be used with the related full backup and any intermediate incremental backups. For example:

phantom_backup_group_0_level_0.tar → phantom_backup_group_0_level_1.tar → phantom_backup_group_0_level_2.tar → phantom_backup_group_0_level_3.tar

In this example, phantom_backup_group_0_level_0.tar is the full backup that forms the base of the backup group. The files phantom_backup_group_0_level_1.tar, phantom_backup_group_0_level_2.tar, and phantom_backup_group_0_level_3.tar are incremental backups that depend on the earlier files.

An administrator can restore a deployment from any point in the group as long as the earlier files in the group are present.

Supported restore configurations

This table presents possible destinations for restoring a backup.

The origin of a backup can be any supported deployment, such as a virtual machine image, RPM-based installation, or Amazon Marketplace Image.

  • The deployments, the origin of the backup, and the destination for the restore must be running the same version of .
  • You cannot restore a backup from a privileged instance of to an unprivileged instance or from an unprivileged instance to a privileged instance.
Backup origin Possible backup destinations
Standalone, privileged instance
  • Standalone, privileged instance
  • Privileged cluster
  • Single privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Single privileged instance, external file shares
  • Privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
Single privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Standalone, privileged instance
  • Privileged cluster
  • Single privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Single privileged instance, external file shares
  • Privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
Single privileged instance, external file shares
  • Standalone, privileged instance
  • Privileged cluster
  • Single privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Single privileged instance, external file shares
  • Privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
Privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
  • Standalone, privileged instance
  • Privileged cluster
  • Single privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Single privileged instance, external file shares
  • Privileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
Standalone, unprivileged instance
  • Standalone, unprivileged instance
  • Unprivileged cluster
  • Single unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Single unprivileged instance, external file shares
  • Unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
Unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Standalone, unprivileged instance
  • Unprivileged cluster
  • Single unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Single unprivileged instance, external file shares
  • Unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
Unprivileged instance, external file shares
  • Standalone, unprivileged instance
  • Unprivileged cluster
  • Single unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Single unprivileged instance, external file shares
  • Unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
Unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
  • Standalone, unprivileged instance
  • Unprivileged cluster
  • Single unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database
  • Single unprivileged instance, external file shares
  • Unprivileged instance, external PostgreSQL database and file shares
Last modified on 07 September, 2021
Troubleshooting certificate issues   Back up a Splunk Phantom deployment

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Phantom (Legacy): 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.10.1, 4.10.2, 4.10.3, 4.10.4, 4.10.6, 4.10.7

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