Back up and restore universes

{{< page-finder/head text="Back Up and Restore" subtle="across different products">}} {{< page-finder/list icon="/icons/database-hover.svg" text="YugabyteDB" url="../../manage/backup-restore/" >}} {{< page-finder/list icon="/icons/server-hover.svg" text="YugabyteDB Anywhere" current="" >}} {{< page-finder/list icon="/icons/cloud-hover.svg" text="YugabyteDB Aeon" url="/stable/yugabyte-cloud/cloud-clusters/backup-clusters/" >}} {{< /page-finder/head >}}

You can use YugabyteDB to schedule and manage backups of your universe data. This includes the following features:

• On-demand backup and restore.
• Scheduled backups. Schedule backups at regular intervals, along with retention periods.
• Incremental backups. Create a schedule to take full backups periodically and incremental backups between those full backups.
• Configurable performance parameters. Tune parallelization and buffers for faster backup and restore performance. In most cases, this results in 5x or more speed improvements in backups and restores.
• Point-in-time recovery. Recover universe data from a specific point in time.
• Flexible storage. Store backups in the cloud or in your data center.
• Disaster recovery. Failover to an asynchronously replicated universe in case of unplanned outages.
• Starting with YugabyteDB v2025.2.1, taking YSQL backups during DDLs is supported by default.

{{< note title="Note" >}} Configurable performance parameters and incremental backups are mediated using the yb-controller process, which is only available in YugabyteDB Anywhere v2.16 or later for universes with YugabyteDB version 2.16 or later. {{< /note >}}

Best practices

• Don't perform cluster operations at the same time as your scheduled backup.
• Configure your maintenance window and backup schedule so that they do not conflict.
• Perform full backups before performing a large operation, such as a DDL change.
• Performing a backup or restore incurs a load on the cluster. Perform backup operations when the cluster isn't experiencing heavy traffic. Backing up during times of heavy traffic can temporarily degrade application performance and increase the length of time of the backup.
• Avoid running a backup during or before a scheduled maintenance.

{{<index/block>}}

{{<index/item title="Configure backup storage" body="Configure the storage location for your backups." href="configure-backup-storage/" icon="fa-thin fa-bucket">}}

{{<index/item title="Schedule universe data backups" body="Create backup schedules to regularly back up universe data." href="schedule-data-backups/" icon="fa-thin fa-calendar">}}

{{<index/item title="Back up universe data" body="Back up universes and create incremental backups." href="back-up-universe-data/" icon="fa-thin fa-down-to-bracket">}}

{{<index/item title="Restore universe data" body="Restore from full and incremental backups." href="restore-universe-data/" icon="fa-thin fa-up-to-bracket">}}

{{<index/item title="Perform point-in-time recovery" body="Recover universe data from a specific point in time." href="pitr/" icon="fa-thin fa-timeline-arrow">}}

{{<index/item title="Disaster recovery" body="Fail over to a backup universe in case of unplanned outages." href="disaster-recovery/" icon="fa-thin fa-sun-cloud">}}

{{</index/block>}}