Astra DB Serverless backup retention policy
Active Astra DB Serverless databases automatically create hourly backups. At the end of each UTC day, the last successful hourly backup of the day becomes a daily backup.
The backup retention schedule is as follows:
-
DataStax retains the most recent hourly backups for 24 hours on a rolling basis.
-
DataStax retains the most recent daily backups for 19 days on a rolling basis.
At any time, an active database can have up to 24 hours of hourly backups and 19 days of daily backups. This assumes the database never hibernates and all backups are recorded successfully.
New databases can have some preexisting backups due to being initialized from a warm pool of instances. These snapshots are effectively empty. To restore a database less than 20 days old, select a snapshot that was created after you initialized the database.
Backup content
Database backups are snapshots that include SSTables only. They don’t include commit logs or database settings, such as private endpoints. Additionally, Astra DB flushes memtables before recording a snapshot.
Backup exceptions
There are scenarios where backups are discarded, not recorded, or unavailable for restoration.
Hibernated databases don’t record backups
Hibernated databases don’t record backups. A database that is hibernated for more than 19 consecutive days has no backups.
Terminated databases have no backups
You cannot restore data for deleted databases.
Terminating a database destroys all associated data, including recorded backups, and prevents data recovery.
Multi-region databases restore from the primary region by default
Due to Astra DB’s eventual consistency model, multi-region databases replicate the same data across all regions. Although Astra DB records snapshots for all regions where a database is deployed, these snapshots generally contain the same data unless there was a discrepancy in data consistency at the time of snapshot recording. However, if you remove a secondary region from a database, Astra DB immediately deletes all snapshots for that region.
By default, multi-region databases are restored from a snapshot of the primary region, and then the restored data is replicated to all secondary regions. The primary region is the initial region you selected when you created the database.
Self-managed backups
For more control over backup retention, you can contact DataStax Support to request self-managed backup storage.
Data recovery
To request data recovery and start the restoration process, see Restore an Astra DB Serverless database with DataStax Support.
