How to backup and recover Jenkins using AWS S3?

Eric Wei
2 Min To Read
01 Jul, 2023
- Jenkins
- Dev ops

This tutorial will guide you through a practical, step-by-step approach to back up and recover Jenkins on Mac using scripts with AWS S3.

Create IAM to copy files to S3
Setup IAM on Mac
Backup Jenkins
Recover Jenkins

Environment

Mac
Jenkins

Before we get started, you should have installed Jenkins on Mac.

Create IAM to copy files to S3

Sign in to the AWS Management Consol
Create a new IAM user
Create an S3 bucket and assign an IAM user to have permission to access your bucket
Create the IAM access key ID and secret key

Setup IAM on Mac

Install AWS CLI

brew install awscli
Run below to set up IAM with yours

aws configure

Backup Jenkins

Step1: Backup Jenkins

Download the backup_jenkins.sh here

Step2: Upload Jenkins to AWS S3

Create upload_to_s3.sh

#!/bin/bash  
  
if [ -z "$1" ]  
then  
      echo "Input file name"  
      exit 1  
fi  
  
  
AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE="<Your AWS Profile>"  
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="<Your AWS Region >"  
S3_BUCKET="s3://<Your AWS Bucket Name>"  
  
  
/usr/local/bin/aws s3 cp $1 --profile ${AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE} --region ${AWS_DEFAULT_REGION} ${S3_BUCKET}

Create cronjob_backup.sh to combine the two scripts shown above.

#!/bin/bash  
  
rm -rf jenkins.tar  
rm -rf tmp  
  
FILE_NAME="jenkins-backup.tar"  
  
./backup_jenkins.sh /Users/<YourUserName>/.jenkins ${FILE_NAME}  
  
./upload_to_s3.sh ${FILE_NAME}

Note

backup_jenkins.sh can back up all the jobs and settings in Jenkins at /Users//.jenkins
Once the backup file is done, you can run upload_to_s3.sh to upload it to AWS S3.

Recover Jenkins

Step1: Download Jenkins backup form AWS S3

Create download_s3.sh

#!/bin/bash  
    
if [ -z "$1" ]  
then  
        echo "Input file name (ex: jenkins-backup.tar)"  
      exit 1  
fi  
  
  
AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE="<Your AWS Profile>"  
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="<Your AWS Region >"  
S3_BUCKET="s3://<Your AWS Bucket Name>"  
FILE_NAME="$1"  
  
/usr/local/bin/aws s3 cp ${S3_BUCKET}/medini9/${FILE_NAME} --profile ${AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE} --region ${AWS_DEFAULT_REGION} .

Run script to download Jenkins backup and copy it to Jenkins folder

# Download job and backup files from AWS S3  
./download_s3.sh jenkins-backup.tar  
  
  
# Copy files to Jenkins   
./tar xvf jenkins-backup.tar  
cp -a jenkins-backup/. /Users/<YourUserName>/.jenkins/

Step2: Recover Jenkins

Log in to Jenkins
Log in to Jenkins → System Management
Click Tools and Actions to reload

Then you need to approve backup pipelines

Summary

In this tutorial, we walked you through the process of creating an IAM role to copy files to S3, setting up IAM on a Mac, and finally, backing up and recovering Jenkins.

The scripts provided should give you a comprehensive understanding of the process, enabling you to safeguard your Jenkins data effectively.

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