How to take the fleet server backup

ankitha_sn · July 24, 2023, 10:03am

Hi Team,

Can I know how to take the backup of the fleet server?
I have looked into the documentation and did not find any useful links.

Thanks,
Ankitha

Julia_Bardi · July 24, 2023, 12:29pm

Hi Ankitha, Fleet Server stores its state in Elasticsearch, so you could save a snapshot of Elasticsearch for backup.

Nishant_Chauhan · July 24, 2023, 1:03pm

Hi Julia,
How to use that snapshot to restore, if fleet server crashed or deleted ?

Julia_Bardi · July 27, 2023, 7:02am

If fleet server crashed, it can be restarted the same way as an agent would be: Start and stop Elastic Agents on edge hosts | Fleet and Elastic Agent Guide [8.9] | Elastic

If fleet server is deleted, it has to be re-installed: Deploy on-premises and self-managed | Fleet and Elastic Agent Guide [8.9] | Elastic

ankitha_sn · July 27, 2023, 8:00am

Hi Julia,
Will agents start working seamlessly after the fleet server is up?

Julia_Bardi · July 27, 2023, 8:03am

Hi Ankitha,

It depends on what was the reason that Fleet Server crashed.
Could you give more details on what you are trying to do? Are you facing a concrete issue with Fleet Server? If so, I can help by looking at the error logs to see what is going on.

ankitha_sn · July 27, 2023, 9:41am

Hi Julia,
Here I am trying to understand what happens when the fleet server goes down for any reason.
What will be the agent state which is talking to the fleet server?

And how can we restore it?

Julia_Bardi · July 27, 2023, 11:00am

The agents keep checking in regularly, if the Fleet Server goes down temporarily, the agents would show up as offline in Fleet. As soon as the Fleet Server is up again, the checkins will succeed and the agents go back online. So Fleet Server persists the state between restarts, it is not needed to manually save backup.
Similarly if the Fleet Server is replaced (deleted and re-enrolled), the agent state is still persisted, so should go back online.

ankitha_sn · July 27, 2023, 11:58am

Thanks Julia, Understood.

Could you please provide me with documentation on replacing the fleet server?
Also if we replace fleet server should we manually re-enroll the agent or how that works?

Julia_Bardi · July 27, 2023, 12:09pm

Replacing on-prem fleet server means to uninstall and then to install again, because Fleet Server is also an agent with special config. It shouldn't be necessary to re-enroll the normal agents.
Docs:

ankitha_sn · July 28, 2023, 12:13pm

Hi Julia,
Thanks.

One more question,
What happens to an enrolled agent (who is talking to the fleet), when the fleet is deleted?
Will it work as a standalone agent?
Because I deleted the fleet but the agent was still healthy.

Also How to identify, whether the agent is enrolled in the fleet?
I verified by looking into logs, Is there any other better way to identify?
Please let me know.

Julia_Bardi · July 28, 2023, 12:26pm

The Fleet managed agent shouldn't keep working if the Fleet Server is deleted (it would stop checking in and considered offline after 5 minutes). It will not work as standalone agent.

I think Fleet managed agents can be identified by looking at the agent config and checking if there is any fleet related settings.

ankitha_sn · July 28, 2023, 1:14pm

Apologies, Looks like I dint mention fleet server was deleted(unroll agent) from UI not from CLI(./elastic-agent uninstall). In this case, agent is still healthy

please ignore the other 2 fleet server

Julia_Bardi · July 28, 2023, 1:51pm

I see, I think this is a known issue/behavior that Fleet Server keeps running after its agent is unenrolled. If the host or agent is restarted, Fleet Server will stop and consequently the agents enrolled to it will be offline as well.

system · August 25, 2023, 1:52pm

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