Welcome to Freezer’s documentation

Freezer is a distributed Backup and Restore as a Service platform for OpenStack environments and multi-OS heterogeneous infrastructure (Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, macOS).

It delivers automated, efficient, and secure backup and restore capabilities for file systems, databases, block storage volumes, and OpenStack cloud infrastructure.

Note

For a deep dive into component roles, performance tuning, and workflow details, see the Freezer Overview & Architecture document.

Key Features

Backup Engines & Workloads

• File System Backups: Point-in-time snapshots and tree backups (GNU Tar archive engine).

• Database Backups: Consistent LVM-backed snapshots for MongoDB journalled directory trees and MySQL DBs.

• Block Storage Support: Differential block backups using rsync algorithms and OpenStack Cinder volume integration.

• Granular Restores: Automated point-in-time restoration to local filesystems or volume targets.

Storage & Security

• Multiple Storage Media: Pluggable storage engines supporting OpenStack Swift object storage, local filesystems, S3, and SSH targets.

• Strong Encryption: Client-side AES-256-CFB encryption payload protection.

• Compression: Multiple compression algorithm support (zlib, bzip2, xz/lzma).

• Automated Retention: Policy-driven removal of expired backups.

Orchestration & Operations

• Distributed Scheduler: Orchestrator daemon managing multi-job scheduling and execution.

• High Availability: Clustered scheduler support with distributed coordination (tooz).

• Multi-Node Job Sync: Synchronized job execution across multiple compute nodes.

• Web User Interface: Native OpenStack Horizon dashboard plugin integration.

• Hook Execution: Custom pre-job and post-job script execution hooks.

Architecture Summary

Freezer is structured around a 3-tier separation of concerns:

1. Freezer Web UI: OpenStack Horizon dashboard interface for job monitoring and configuration.

2. Freezer API: RESTful control plane API managing job schedules, client registrations, and metadata.

3. Freezer Scheduler & Agent: Client-side orchestrator daemon and stateless worker execution agent.

For full architectural diagrams, component interactions, and resource tuning details, see Freezer Overview & Architecture.

Documentation

System Overview

• Freezer Overview & Architecture
  • Architecture & Core Components
  • Resource Efficiency & Performance Tuning
  • How Incremental Backups Work
  • System Visual Diagrams

Installation Guides

• Backup/Restore service
  • Backup/Restore service overview
  • Concepts and definitions
  • Install and configure
  • Verify operation
  • Next steps

User & CLI Guides

• User Guide
  • Freezer Agent Installation
  • Agent User Guide
  • Backup Options
  • Storage Options
  • Restore
  • Parallel Backup
  • Freezer Scheduler
  • MISC
  • Scheduler User Guide
  • Web User Interface User Guide
• CLI Guide
  • freezer-agent
  • freezer-scheduler

Administrator Guides

• Admin Guide
  • Installation
  • Operation
  • Scheduler Coordination (Clustering)
• Config reference
  • Freezer Scheduler Configuration Options
  • Freezer Scheduler Sample Configuration File

Developer & Reference

• Developer Guide
  • API routes
  • Backup metadata structure
  • Freezer Client document structure
  • API Documents
• Reference
  • freezer