Create your first automation with the STACKIT Automation Service

This guide takes you from nothing to a first working setup. You enable the STACKIT Automation Service, create your first automation from a template, run it, and verify the result. It shows the most common settings for a first automation and works entirely in the STACKIT Portal. There are more ways to manage automations. For a deeper understanding, consult the How-tos section.

Prerequisites

• You have a STACKIT customer account: Create a customer account
• You have a STACKIT user account: Create a user account
• You have a STACKIT project: Create a project
• You have at least one disk volume with a label you can target. The automation applies to volumes that match the labels you specify later in this guide.

Enable the service

The STACKIT Automation Service is integrated into the Disk Volumes section of the STACKIT Portal and must be enabled once per region before you can use it.

STACKIT Portal

1. Visit the STACKIT Portal.
2. On the project overview navigate to Storage —> Disk Volumes —> Automations.
3. Click the button Enable.
4. When the confirmation message pops up, click the button Enable to enable the service in the given region.

API

To enable the STACKIT Automation Service, use this POST request:

POST https://service-enablement.api.stackit.cloud/v2/projects/{project_id}/regions/{region_id}/services/cloud.stackit.automation

Create your first automation

For this guide you use the Volume Recovery Point Management template, which automatically creates snapshots as fast recovery points and daily backups in isolated storage for all volumes matching your labels.

1. On the project overview navigate to Storage —> Disk Volumes —> Automations.
2. Click Create automation and go to General Information.
3. Enter a name for your automation and select Volume Recovery Point Management as the Automation template.
4. Under Associated Volumes, select Selected and add the label of the volume you want to protect (for example, environment=production). Click Show associated volumes to verify that the expected volumes are targeted.
5. In Schedule, select Scheduled and set a Start Date, Start Time, and a Daily recurrence so a recovery point is created every day.
6. In the Recovery Points section:
   • Under Snapshots, enable the Snapshot retention policy toggle and set Snapshots per volume to 2, so only the two most recent snapshots are kept.
   • Under Backups, enable the Daily backup retention policy toggle and set the Retention period (Days) (default is 14 days) to define how long daily backups are retained.

   Note: When a backup retention policy is configured, the system will automatically create a backup of the latest available snapshot when the backup process is triggered once per day. Backups are automatically deleted when the retention period ends.

7. Review your configuration in the right-hand summary pane and click Order fee-based to finish.

Start with a single, clearly labeled volume for your first automation. Once you have verified the result, you can widen the label selector to cover more volumes.

Verify the result

Your automation runs automatically according to its schedule, and you can also trigger it manually to confirm it works right away.

1. On the project overview navigate to Storage —> Disk Volumes —> Automations.
2. Select your automation and trigger a manual Execute run.
3. Open the automation’s execution history to confirm that the run completed successfully.
4. To view the generated recovery points and perform a restore:
   • Navigate to Storage —> Disk Volumes —> Volumes, click on your targeted volume, and select Snapshots to view created snapshots and trigger point-in-time restorations.
   • Navigate to Storage —> Disk Volumes —> Backups (or select Backups directly inside your volume details) to inspect daily backups once the daily backup process has triggered, which can be used to restore volumes from dedicated isolated storage.

You now have a working automation that protects your volumes automatically. To learn about all features, concepts, and settings in depth, continue with the How-tos section.