Questions regarding ElasticSearch backup

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

Hello,

I have some questions regarding ElasticSearch backups. As described in the documentation (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/backing-up-your-cluster.html) the first backup is a full backup and all following backups are incremental.

If I decide to run a backup every night e.g. this means that after three days I need to restore the full backup and the backups of two days to get the last backup state. After one year this would mean that I need to restore the first backup and followed by 364 incremental backups.

Do I understand this correct?

Another question: if I create another repository and I run again a backup. Will this backup be a full backup?

Greetings,

Martin

2

Nope, but that's a good thing!

You can restore the full backup and then just the day you want and Elasticsearch will figure out what other data it needs from any of the other backups.

Yes that is correct.

3

Hello Mark,

thank you very much for your quick answers!

I have an additional question:

E.g. I create an index A with several documents. I run a first backup, which is a full backup.
On the next day I create index B (with documents) and run a backup, which is an incremental one.
On the third day I create index C (again with data). But I also delete index A. Then I create a new backup.
What will happen with the data of index A in the backup repository? Will it also be deleted? I assume, it will not be deleted. If I'm right this means, that my repository grows and grows.

Greetings,

Martin

4

The snapshot and restore functionality is described very well in this blog post.

5

Thanks a lot. It's a great article.