Backups

Managed Service for SQL Server provides automatic and manual database backups. Backups take up space in the storage allocated to the cluster. If the total amount of data and backups exceeds the amount of storage, the excess is billed.

A backup is automatically created once a day. You currently can't disable automatic backups or change the storage period for automatic backups (7 days by default).

The backup process start time is set when a cluster is created or updated. The backup will start within half an hour of the specified time. By default, the backup process starts at 22:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).

To restore a cluster from a backup, follow the instructions.

Creating backups

Backups can be made automatically and manually. Regardless of their type, they follow the same guidelines:

• The first backup and every seventh backup are full backups of all databases.
• Other backups are incremental and only store data that has changed since the previous backup to save storage space.

After a backup is created, it's compressed for storage. The exact backup size currently isn't displayed.

Storing backups

Backups are stored in Yandex internal storage as binary files and are encrypted using GnuMS. Each cluster has its own encryption keys.

All backups (automatic or manual) are stored for 7 days. You can store one or two full backups to ensure recovery from an automatic seven-day-old backup.

Checking backups

Checking backup integrity

Backup integrity is checked on synthetic data using integration tests available in the service. For user clusters, backups currently aren't checked.

Checking backup recovery

To test the backup feature, restore a cluster from a backup and check the integrity of your data.