Backup and Restore

Backups are snapshots of the state of your clusters at a given point in time. Currently, any paid clusters provisioned by an account with a valid payment method can have a maximum of 7 concurrent backups.

The backup feature is not supported on free-tier instances or instances provisioned by an account without a valid payment method.

All tasks described on this page can be completed in the Backup and Restore tab in the Admin Portal. To get to the Admin Portal, open the Tools menu on any cluster in the My Clusters view.

full cluster actions dropdown

Inside the Admin Portal, choose the Backup and Restore tab on the left. This section is not available in free-tier clusters.

admin portal tabs

Data Storage and Encryption

Backups are saved to Amazon EFS on AWS, Azure Files on Microsoft Azure, and GCP Filestore on GCP. Backup storage is provisioned when you start a paid-tier cluster and is based on the maximum number of backups allowed (currently fixed at 7). It only stops incurring charges when the cluster is terminated. Stopping the cluster does not stop charges for backup storage.

Backups are encrypted by default using the native encryption feature of the cloud provider with platform-managed keys.

Scheduled backup

By default, scheduled backup is turned on when instances are running and will be done daily. If the maximum retention number is reached when a new backup is made, the oldest scheduled backup will be deleted. The backup schedule can be customized.

Change backup schedule

Enter your desired backup time as a cron job and click UPDATE to confirm.

scheduled backup

Manual backup and restore

Aside from scheduled backups, you can also perform and restore backups manually in the Admin Portal.

  • If you want to perform a manual backup when there are already seven copies of backups, you must delete an older backup.

  • The maximum number of manual backups is six, as the platform always reserves one spot for scheduled backups.

Provide a custom backup tag for a new manual backup or an existing backup tag to restore from.

backup restore

Click BACK UP or RESTORE to finish the operation.

Delete a backup

Go to the Manage Backups section. In the Backup List, find the backup you want to delete and click the delete button (trash icon) in the Action column.

manage backups