Vertica Backup and Restore: What's Your Use Case?

Overview of Backup and Restore

Backup is an important maintenance routine for your database. The Vertica vbr Python script allows you to back up, restore, and copy your database to another cluster. Depending on the size of your data, you can:

  • Create full and incremental database backups.
  • Back up specific tables and schemas.

Similarly, you can restore a full database or specific tables from a backup. Vertica supports automatic backup and restore after you configure the runtime parameters in vbr.

For the purpose of this document and child documents:

  • The primary cluster is referred to as the source.
  • The secondary cluster is referred to as the target.
  • Backup always occurs on the source.
  • Restore always occurs on the target.

For the purpose of demonstration and conciseness, this document and child documents use a 2-node cluster, but you should use a 3-node cluster with a K-safety level of 1.

Depending on your data requirements, choose the appropriate Backup and Restore documents from the following:

Title Use if These Conditions Are True…

Part 1: Copy and Restore Data from a Vertica Cluster to a Backup
  • Your source and target cluster are the same.
  • You want to copy data from your Vertica database cluster to the backup location.

Part 2: Copying Data Between Two Similar Vertica Clusters
  • Your source and target are identical Vertica clusters.
  • The clusters have the same number of nodes and same Vertica version.
  • You want to copy data between two similar Vertica clusters.

Part 3: Copying Data Between Two Dissimilar Vertica Clusters
  • Your source and target are different Vertica clusters.
  • The clusters have a different number of nodes and different Vertica versions.
  • You want to copy data from between two different Vertica clusters.

Backup and Restore on the Cloud

If you want to backup and restore Vertica clusters on Amazon Web Services (AWS), see Vertica on Amazon Web Services Backup and Restore Guide.