What CrateDB supports
- Incremental snapshots: Only new or modified data is included after the initial snapshot, reducing storage and speeding up backups.
- Wide repository support: Snapshots can be stored on local filesystems, S3 buckets, Azure Blob Storage or any location reachable via HTTP(S), FTP or file protocols.
- Granular selection: Back up entire clusters, select tables or individual partitions, giving you flexibility in your retention strategy.
- SQL-based snapshot and restore operations: Use familiar SQL syntax to create repositories, take snapshots, and restore.
- Cloud backup automation: For CrateDB Cloud, hourly backups are taken by default and retention policies are built in.
Why this matters
- Business continuity: Recover quickly from failures, corruption or human error, minimizing downtime and data loss.
- Cost-efficient storage: Incremental snapshots reduce the volume of data requiring long-term retention.
- Data retention & compliance: Back up historical data in line with regulatory requirements while managing hot vs. cold data layers.
- Operational flexibility: Choose where snapshots live (on-prem, cloud, hybrid) and how you restore (whole cluster, table, partition) to match your recovery objectives.
- Scalable with your data: As CrateDB scales horizontally, the snapshot mechanism lets you scale backup and restore operations as well.
Best practices
- Define a clear snapshot schedule aligned to your data change rate and RPO (Recovery Point Objective).
- Store snapshots in a separate physical location (e.g., different region/cloud) for disaster recovery.
- Periodically test restores to validate your snapshot strategy and ensure recoverability.
- Use retention policies and purge obsolete snapshots to manage storage cost and compliance.
- Monitor snapshot size and duration, especially after large schema or data changes.
- For edge or remote environments, combine local snapshots with upstream replication or sync for central preservation.
Use-cases & deployment scenarios
- Edge / IoT environments: Take frequent snapshots of local clusters, preserve data locally and replicate to central storage for long-term retention.
- On-Prem / Private Cloud: Meet governance and sovereignty requirements by storing backups on-site or in private cloud repositories.
- Cloud deployments: Leverage built-in automated backups and regional replication for fast restore and global availability (e.g., CrateDB Cloud).
- Selective retention: Back up only historical partitions of time-series tables that are no longer frequently queried but must be retained for audit or analytics.
