# ElasticSearch 1.0 Manual Backup

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-1-0-manual-backup/2053
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [June 6, 2015, 3:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-1-0-manual-backup/2053 "2015-06-06T03:40:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Nathan\_F](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@Nathan\_F](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Nathan_F)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2015, 3:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-1-0-manual-backup/2053/1 "2015-06-06T03:40:34Z")

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Hi all,

I am in the position of wanting to upgrade a cluster that is 15TB in size. Prior to doing this I want to create a backup of my indices. I just want to make sure that I might not be missing anything critical in the following approach. Initial testing seems just fine and, while this may seem "hackish", I want a simple command line solution that will ensure that if a rolling upgrade fails, I can at least reconstruct the entire cluster confidently.

Background: Indices are created daily. Once a day has passed the index is no longer written to ever.

Backup:

1. I call flush against the index (which is no longer being written to and never will be written to). I assume this makes sure that everything is properly written to disk.
2. I ask for shard locations for the index via api calls, zip those locations, and push them to storage. In this case there are 5 shards per index and I only intend to copy the primary shards in order to save space.
3. I go to the clusters active master and zip the folder that contains metadata about the index and push it to storage.

Restore:

1. Unzip the metadata folder on the master node.
2. Unzip the data on a data node.
3. Restart the master(s).

Questions:

1. Does this seem reasonable? Am I missing anything?
2. Are there possible points of failure that I should be aware of?
3. Do I have to restart the master(s) or is there another way to have the cluster become aware of newly unzipped indices?

I appreciate your time,  
Nate

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### Author: ![magnusbaeck](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/magnusbaeck/32/44943_2.png) [@magnusbaeck](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/magnusbaeck)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2015, 9:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-1-0-manual-backup/2053/2 "2015-06-06T09:46:55Z")

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Just double-checking here: you _are_ aware of the snapshot/restore feature that would be way safer and quite possibly easier than what you're contemplating?

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### Author: ![Nathan\_F](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@Nathan\_F](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Nathan_F)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2015, 4:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-1-0-manual-backup/2053/3 "2015-06-08T04:04:44Z")

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I was under the impression that 1.0 only offers fs backup. I am working in AWS and would rather not have to deal with attaching volumes for backup (even given EFS). I take it s3 backup is also available in ES 1.0.0? In which case that is great news!

Edit: Looking at the documentation for vs 2.0.0RC1, which is what I am using, it looks like s3 is in fact supported. Thanks for your time!

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### Author: ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2015, 5:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-1-0-manual-backup/2053/4 "2015-06-08T05:35:40Z")

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AWS plugin exists since ages and will help you to do that.

You have also the same for Azure and HDFS.

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### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 12:09am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-1-0-manual-backup/2053/5 "2017-07-06T00:09:05Z")

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