Take Full and Incremental Backups

Because CockroachDB is designed with high fault tolerance, backups are primarily needed for disaster recovery (i.e., if your cluster loses a majority of its nodes). Isolated issues (such as small-scale node outages) do not require any intervention. However, as an operational best practice, we recommend taking regular backups of your data.

There are two main types of backups:

• Full backups
• Incremental backups

You can use the BACKUP statement to efficiently back up your cluster's schemas and data to popular cloud services such as AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, or NFS, and the RESTORE statement to efficiently restore schema and data as necessary. For more information, see Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations.

Backup collections

A backup collection defines a set of backups and their metadata. The collection can contain multiple full backups and their subsequent incremental backups. The path to a backup is created using a date-based naming scheme and stored at the collection URI passed with the BACKUP statement.

There are some specific cases where part of the collection data is stored at a different URI:

• A locality-aware backup. The backup collection will be stored according to the URIs passed with the BACKUP statement: BACKUP INTO LATEST IN {collectionURI}, {localityURI}, {localityURI}. Here, the collectionURI represents the default locality.
• As of v22.1, it is possible to store incremental backups at a different URI to the related full backup. This means that one or multiple storage locations can hold one backup collection.

By default, full backups are stored at the root of the collection's URI in a date-based path, and incremental backups are stored in the /incrementals directory. The following example shows a backup collection created using these default values, where all backups reside in one storage bucket:

Collection URI:
|—— 2022
  |—— 02
    |—— 09-155340.13/
      |—— Full backup files
[...]
|—— incrementals
  |—— 2022
  |—— 02
    |—— 25-172907.21/
      |—— 20220325
        |—— 17921.23
          |—— incremental backup files

SHOW BACKUPS IN {collectionURI} will display a list of the full backup subdirectories at the collection's URI.

Alternately, the following directories also constitute a backup collection. There are multiple backups in two separate URIs. Each individual backup is a full backup and its related incremental backup(s). Despite using the incremental_location option to store the incremental backup in an alternative location, that incremental backup is still part of this backup collection as it depends on the full backup in the first cloud storage bucket:

Collection URI
|—— 2022
  |—— 02
    |—— 09-155340.13/
      |—— Full backup files
      |—— 20220210/
        |—— 155530.50/
        |—— 16-143018.72/
          |—— Full backup files
|—— incrementals
  |—— 2022
  |—— 02
    |—— 25-172907.21/
      |—— 20220325
        |—— 17921.23
          |—— incremental backup files

Explicit Incrementals URI
|—— 2022
  |—— 02
    |—— 25-172907.21/
      |—— 20220325
        |—— 17921.23
          |—— incremental_location backup files

In the examples on this page, {collectionURI} is a placeholder for the storage location that will contain the example backup.

Full backups

Full backups are now available to both core and Enterprise users.

Full backups contain an un-replicated copy of your data and can always be used to restore your cluster. These files are roughly the size of your data and require greater resources to produce than incremental backups. You can take full backups as of a given timestamp. Optionally, you can include the available revision history in the backup.

In most cases, it's recommended to take nightly full backups of your cluster. A cluster backup allows you to do the following:

• Restore table(s) from the cluster
• Restore database(s) from the cluster
• Restore a full cluster

Backups will export Enterprise license keys during a full cluster backup. When you restore a full cluster with an Enterprise license, it will restore the Enterprise license of the cluster you are restoring from.

Take a full backup

To perform a full cluster backup, use the BACKUP statement:

> BACKUP INTO '{collectionURI}';

To restore a backup, use the RESTORE statement, specifying what you want to restore as well as the collection's URI:

• To restore the latest backup of a table:

  > RESTORE TABLE bank.customers FROM LATEST IN '{collectionURI}';
  

• To restore the latest backup of a database:

  > RESTORE DATABASE bank FROM LATEST IN '{collectionURI}';
  

• To restore the latest backup of your full cluster:

  > RESTORE FROM LATEST IN '{collectionURI}';
  

  Note:

  A full cluster restore can only be run on a target cluster that has never had user-created databases or tables.

• To restore a backup from a specific subdirectory:

  > RESTORE DATABASE bank FROM {subdirectory} IN '{collectionURI}';
  

To view the available backup subdirectories, use SHOW BACKUPS.

Incremental backups

If your cluster grows too large for nightly full backups, you can take less frequent full backups (e.g., weekly) with nightly incremental backups. Incremental backups are storage efficient and faster than full backups for larger clusters.

Incremental backups are smaller and faster to produce than full backups because they contain only the data that has changed since a base set of backups you specify (which must include one full backup, and can include many incremental backups). You can take incremental backups either as of a given timestamp or with full revision history.

Take an incremental backup

Periodically run the BACKUP command to take a full backup of your cluster:

> BACKUP INTO '{collectionURI}';

Then, create nightly incremental backups based off of the full backups you've already created. To append an incremental backup to the most recent full backup created at the collection's URI, use the LATEST syntax:

> BACKUP INTO LATEST IN '{collectionURI}';

New in v22.1: This will add the incremental backup to the default /incrementals directory at the root of the backup collection's directory. With incremental backups in the /incrementals directory, you can apply different lifecycle/retention policies from cloud storage providers to the /incrementals directory as needed.

If it's ever necessary, you can then use the RESTORE statement to restore your cluster, database(s), and/or table(s). Restoring from incremental backups requires previous full and incremental backups.

To restore from the latest backup in the collection, stored in the default /incrementals collection subdirectory, run:

> RESTORE FROM LATEST IN '{collectionURI}';

To restore from a specific backup in the collection:

> RESTORE FROM '{subdirectory}' IN '{collectionURI}';

Incremental backups with explicitly specified destinations

New in v22.1: To explicitly control where your incremental backups go, use the incremental_location option. By default, incremental backups are stored in the /incrementals subdirectory at the root of the collection. However, there are some advanced cases where you may want to store incremental backups in a different storage location.

In the following examples, the {collectionURI} specifies the storage location containing the full backup. The {explicit_incrementalsURI} is the alternative location that you can store an incremental backup:

BACKUP INTO LATEST IN '{collectionURI}' AS OF SYSTEM TIME '-10s' WITH incremental_location = '{explicit_incrementalsURI}';

Although the incremental backup will be in a different storage location, it is still part of the logical backup collection.

A full backup must be present in the {collectionURI} in order to take an incremental backup to the alternative {explicit_incrementalsURI}. If there isn't a full backup present in {collectionURI} when taking an incremental backup with incremental_location, the error path does not contain a completed latest backup will be returned.

For details on the backup directory structure when taking incremental backups with incremental_location, see this incremental location directory structure example.

To take incremental backups that are stored in the same way as v21.2 and earlier, you can use the incremental_location option. You can specify the same collectionURI with incremental_location and the backup will place the incremental backups in a date-based path under the full backup, rather than in the default /incrementals directory:

BACKUP INTO LATEST IN '{collectionURI}' AS OF SYSTEM TIME '-10s' WITH incremental_location = '{collectionURI}';

When you append incrementals to this backup, they will continue to be stored in a date-based path under the full backup.

To restore an incremental backup that was taken using the incremental_location option, you must run RESTORE with the full backup's location and the incremental_location option referencing the location passed in the original BACKUP statement:

RESTORE TABLE movr.users FROM LATEST IN '{collectionURI}' WITH incremental_location = '{explicit_incrementalsURI}';

For details on cloud storage URLs, see Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations.

Examples

The following examples provide connection strings to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Storage. For guidance on connecting to other storage options or using other authentication parameters, read Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations.

> CREATE SCHEDULE core_schedule_label
  FOR BACKUP INTO 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{PATH}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
    RECURRING '@daily'
    FULL BACKUP ALWAYS
    WITH SCHEDULE OPTIONS first_run = 'now';

     schedule_id     |        name         | status |         first_run         | schedule |                                                                                       backup_stmt
---------------------+---------------------+--------+---------------------------+----------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  588799238330220545 | core_schedule_label | ACTIVE | 2020-09-11 00:00:00+00:00 | @daily   | BACKUP INTO 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{PATH}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}' WITH detached
(1 row)

> CREATE SCHEDULE core_schedule_label
  FOR BACKUP INTO 'azure://{CONTAINER NAME}?AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME={ACCOUNT NAME}&AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY={URL-ENCODED KEY}'
    RECURRING '@daily'
    FULL BACKUP ALWAYS
    WITH SCHEDULE OPTIONS first_run = 'now';

     schedule_id     |        name         | status |         first_run         | schedule |                                                                                       backup_stmt
---------------------+---------------------+--------+---------------------------+----------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  588799238330220545 | core_schedule_label | ACTIVE | 2020-09-11 00:00:00+00:00 | @daily   | BACKUP INTO 'azure://{CONTAINER NAME}?AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME={ACCOUNT NAME}&AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY={URL-ENCODED KEY}' WITH detached
(1 row)

> CREATE SCHEDULE core_schedule_label
  FOR BACKUP INTO 'gs://{BUCKET NAME}/{PATH}?AUTH=specified&CREDENTIALS={ENCODED KEY}'
    RECURRING '@daily'
    FULL BACKUP ALWAYS
    WITH SCHEDULE OPTIONS first_run = 'now';

     schedule_id     |        name         | status |         first_run         | schedule |                                                                                       backup_stmt
---------------------+---------------------+--------+---------------------------+----------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  588799238330220545 | core_schedule_label | ACTIVE | 2020-09-11 00:00:00+00:00 | @daily   | BACKUP INTO 'gs://{BUCKET NAME}/{PATH}?AUTH=specified&CREDENTIALS={ENCODED KEY}' WITH detached
(1 row)

For more examples on how to schedule backups that take full and incremental backups, see CREATE SCHEDULE FOR BACKUP.

Advanced examples

For examples of advanced BACKUP and RESTORE use cases, see:

• Incremental backups with a specified destination
• Backup with revision history and point-in-time restore
• Locality-aware backup and restore
• Encrypted backup and restore
• Restore into a different database
• Remove the foreign key before restore
• Restoring users from system.users backup
• Show an incremental backup at a different location

See also

• BACKUP
• RESTORE
• Take and Restore Encrypted Backups
• Take and Restore Locality-aware Backups
• Take Backups with Revision History and Restore from a Point-in-time
• IMPORT
• Use the Built-in SQL Client
• cockroach Commands Overview

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