Backup and Restore

This article describes the essentials of how backups are managed and used in Exasol SaaS.

Backup essentials

The data in an Exasol SaaS database is remotely backed up to prevent accidental loss of data. The backups can be restored to the database on request.

Backups are the primary disaster recovery mechanism because a copy of the database is stored in a separate S3 bucket. If something happens to the underlying storage layer of the database, Exasol can create a new database built on the backup to restore availability.

During a backup, the database performs an incremental sync between the data in the local S3 bucket and the data in the remote S3 bucket. During this sync, all data blocks that were modified since the last backup are copied to a separate S3 bucket. Since this sync is incremental, we minimize the duration of the sync and the network utilization by only transferring data which was recently modified. Therefore, the duration of the backup is highly dependent on the amount of data that was modified.

Information concerning backups is not visible in any system table.

The database must be online for a backup to take place. If the database is shut down during the backup, the operation is aborted. As a result, the next backup that occurs may take longer because more data needs to be synchronized. This may result in a database running without a valid backup for disaster recovery.

Backup schedule

While the database is running, backups are created and synced incrementally throughout the day. These daily backups have an expiry time of 7 days.

Modifying the backup schedule or running a manual backup is not supported.

Restore essentials

On request, Exasol can perform a restore of a backup. Restoring a backup requires a downtime. The duration of the downtime depends on the size of the backup to be restored.

To execute a restore, click on Help > Support in the web console to open a support request.