Creating Snapshots | Backup And Restore

Introduction

Snapshots in Elasticsearch provide a way to backup your cluster's data. Snapshots can be stored in a repository, which can be a shared filesystem, Amazon S3, HDFS, Azure, or Google Cloud Storage. This tutorial will walk you through the process of creating snapshots in Elasticsearch from start to finish.

Step 1: Setting up the Snapshot Repository

Before creating snapshots, you need to set up a snapshot repository. This is where the snapshots will be stored. In this example, we will create a shared filesystem repository.

Example:

Create a directory on your shared filesystem that Elasticsearch can write to, for example:

mkdir /mnt/my_backup

Next, register the repository with Elasticsearch:

PUT _snapshot/my_backup_repository

{ "type": "fs", "settings": { "location": "/mnt/my_backup" } }

Step 2: Creating a Snapshot

Once the repository is set up, you can create a snapshot. You can take a snapshot of the entire cluster or specific indices.

To create a snapshot of the entire cluster, use the following command:

PUT _snapshot/my_backup_repository/snapshot_1?wait_for_completion=true

{ "accepted": true }

If you want to create a snapshot of specific indices, you can specify them as follows:

PUT _snapshot/my_backup_repository/snapshot_2?wait_for_completion=true

{ "indices": "index_1,index_2", "ignore_unavailable": true, "include_global_state": false }

Step 3: Verifying the Snapshot

To verify that the snapshot was created successfully, you can use the following command to get information about the snapshots in your repository:

GET _snapshot/my_backup_repository/_all

{ "snapshots": [ { "snapshot": "snapshot_1", "uuid": "some-uuid", "version_id": 7040199, "version": "7.4.1", "indices": [ "index_1", "index_2" ], "state": "SUCCESS", "start_time": "2020-01-01T00:00:00.000Z", "end_time": "2020-01-01T00:01:00.000Z", "duration_in_millis": 60000 } ] }

Step 4: Restoring from a Snapshot

Restoring data from a snapshot is straightforward. You can restore the entire cluster or specific indices from a snapshot.

To restore the entire cluster from a snapshot, use the following command:

POST _snapshot/my_backup_repository/snapshot_1/_restore

{ "accepted": true }

To restore specific indices from a snapshot, use the following command: