cassandra-medusa

What is cassandra-medusa?

The cassandra-medusa image packages Medusa, the de facto open-source backup and restore solution for Apache Cassandra clusters. Medusa automates the process of taking consistent, incremental or full snapshots of Cassandra node data and uploading them to object storage (Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, or local/NFS paths).

It is used by teams running Cassandra in production who need a reliable, scriptable backup strategy without manual nodetool snapshot management. Medusa is also integrated into the K8ssandra operator for Kubernetes-native Cassandra deployments. It supports both scheduled backups and on-demand backup and restore operations.

How to use this image

Configure a medusa.ini file:

[cassandra]
use_sudo = false

[storage]
storage_provider = s3
bucket_name = my-cassandra-backups
key_file = /etc/medusa/credentials
prefix = prod-cluster
max_backup_age = 30
max_backup_count = 10

Take a backup:

docker run --rm \
  --network host \
  -v $(pwd)/medusa.ini:/etc/medusa/medusa.ini:ro \
  -v ~/.aws:/etc/medusa/credentials:ro \
  k8ssandra/medusa \
  medusa backup --backup-name my-backup-$(date +%F)

List available backups:

docker run --rm \
  -v $(pwd)/medusa.ini:/etc/medusa/medusa.ini:ro \
  k8ssandra/medusa \
  medusa list-backups

Restore from a backup:

docker run --rm \
  --network host \
  -v $(pwd)/medusa.ini:/etc/medusa/medusa.ini:ro \
  k8ssandra/medusa \
  medusa restore-node --backup-name my-backup-2024-01-15

Image variants

k8ssandra/medusa:latest

The latest stable Medusa release. The standard choice for both standalone Cassandra and K8ssandra deployments.

k8ssandra/medusa:<version>

Pinned version tags such as k8ssandra/medusa:0.22.0. Recommended for production to ensure consistent backup and restore behavior and compatibility with your Cassandra version.