Allow snapshot names to be rotated with most recent being named "_latest" about snapscheduler

[ricardolyn]

I find this useful too to have one that as the lastest snapshot. is there a plan to include this feature?

[PSjoe]

I just realized this isn't a trivial ask, since you cannot rename Kubernetes objects.

About the only way I could envision it working is if any given snapshot schedule invocation created two at the same time. One with the usual naming, and one with a name of '-latest'. Of course, each invocation would have to delete the existing '-latest' before proceeding.

[JohnStrunk]

For just the reason you mention (being able to easily reference the "latest"), I'd have much preferred a naming scheme like schedule-0, schedule-1, ... for each of the snaps that are retained (0 being the most recent). But, as you mentioned, renaming is not directly supported.

It would be possible to create a 2nd, "-latest" as you suggest, though I'm concerned about 2 things:

• Delete before create means that a failure could leave you with no "latest"
• Since it would be 2 snapshot operations (timestamp + latest), the data wouldn't be identical between the timestamped snap and the one named latest. I don't know whether that would matter to anyone or not.

One interesting thing that's coming in kubernetes is the notion of "data populators."
They will make it possible to create a populator that goes with SnapScheduler, effectively allowing you to use the SnapshotSchedule as the PVC's dataSource. The populator would then restore the latest snapshot when the PVC gets created.

BTW, thanks for the feedback. Glad to see it's being used!

[PSjoe]

Yeah, it was really the exact answer I needed for my use case! Well, almost exact. :)

In my particular use case, the difference between "latest" and the "date stamp" version wouldn't matter. I just want to get "as close as possible" and keep a couple of old copies "just in case". The exact time of the backup isn't nearly as relevant. So even in that short time where there's no "latest", I could always manually go back to the one just before.

And presumably, this would be something you could toggle on and off, since not everyone would need it.

Regardless, thanks for putting this together! Even as is it's a great help. If I knew how to write Go, I'd take a stab at this feature request myself. But alas, I have to "serverfault" my way though bash scripting most of the time.

[JohnStrunk]

I don't have immediate plans to work on it, but I'd be happy to shepherd a contribution of this feature.