Perform a full backup before upgrading or migrating Splunk UBA

Use the backup and restore scripts located in /opt/caspida/bin/utils to perform full offline backups of Splunk UBA and restore Splunk UBA from the full offline backup files. Following are some use cases when you can perform full offline backups:

• Perform a full offline backup, then use the backup file to restore Splunk UBA. For example, you can perform a full backup each time before you upgrade Splunk UBA to the next release.
• Perform a full offline backup, then use the backup file to migrate your Splunk UBA deployment to the next larger size on the same operating system. For example, you can migrate from 5 nodes to 7 nodes, or 10 nodes to 20 nodes. If you want to migrate from 7 nodes to 20 nodes, migrate from 7 nodes to 10 nodes first, then from 10 nodes to 20 nodes.

The restore script removes all file-based data sources and does not restore them on the target Splunk UBA system.

Requirements for using the backup and restore scripts

Make sure the following requirements are met before using the backup and restore scripts:

• The target system you are restoring or migrating to must be set up with Splunk UBA already up and running.
• The target system you are restoring or migrating to must have the same version of Splunk UBA running on the same operating system.
• The target system you are migrating to must be the same size or one deployment size larger than the backup system. See Plan and scale your Splunk UBA deployment in the Install and Upgrade Splunk User Behavior Analytics manual for information about the supported Splunk UBA deployment sizes.
• The backup and restore scripts are case-sensitive. Verify that your DNS host name is an exact match with the host names in /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname. See Configure host name lookups and DNS in Install and Upgrade Splunk User Behavior Analytics.

Summary of the procedure to migrate your Splunk UBA deployment to the next larger size

Below is a summary of the migration process using the backup and restore scripts. For example, to migrate from a 3 node cluster to a 5 node cluster:

1. Verify the requirements for using the backup and restore scripts.
2. Run the uba-backup.sh script on the 3 node cluster. The script stops Splunk UBA, performs the backup, then restarts Splunk UBA on the 3 node cluster.
3. Set up the 5 node cluster so that all nodes meet the system requirements, and install Splunk UBA. The version number of the Splunk UBA software must match the version number of the backup. See the Splunk UBA installation checklist in Install and Upgade Splunk User Behavior Analytics to begin a Splunk UBA installation.
4. Verify that Splunk UBA is up and running in the 5 node cluster. See Verify successful installation in Install and Upgrade Splunk User Behavior Analytics.
5. Run the uba-restore.sh script on the 5 node cluster. The sript stops Splunk UBA, restores the system from the earlier backup, then starts Splunk UBA.

Backup disk size requirements

Add an additional disk to the Splunk UBA management node mounted as /var/ubabackup for the Splunk UBA backups.

The size of the additional disk must follow these guidelines:

• The disk size must be at least half the size of your deployment in terabytes. For example, a 10-node system requires a 5TB disk.
• If you are creating archives, allow for an additional 50 percent of the backup disk size. For example, a 10-node system requires a 5TB disk for backups, and an additional 2.5TB if for archives, so you would need a 7.5TB disk for archived backups.

The table summarizes the minimum disk size requirements for Splunk UBA backups per deployment:

Number of Splunk UBA Nodes	Minimum Disk Size for Backup (without archives)	Minimum Disk Size for Backup (with archives)
1 Node	1TB	1.5TB
3 Nodes	1TB	1.5TB
5 Nodes	2TB	3TB
7 Nodes	4TB	6TB
10 Nodes	5TB	7.5TB
20 Nodes	10TB	15TB

If you have previous backups on the same disk, be sure to also take this into account when determining available disk space.

Scheduling Splunk UBA backups

Perform or schedule backups of Splunk UBA at 10:00 PM local time to avoid conflicts with the offline models, which begin running at Midnight each night.

How long will my backup take?

The amount of time it takes to perform a backup depends on a number of factors, such as:

• The size of your environment
• The age of your environment
• Network bandwidth
• Storage throughput
• Splunk UBA on cloud deployments may be subject to performance restrictions that will significantly increase the backup/restore time
• Creating a compressed archive will take considerably longer due to the time required to compress the data

As an example, a large multi-node deployment with 5TB of data may complete a backup in less than 2 hours if the network bandwidth and storage throughput are not limiting factors.