How to make backups/snapshots in CockroachDB?

Question

How do I create backups of my entire cluster? Can they only be imported back into CockroachDB or can they also be imported into other systems?

Answer 1

CockroachDB support generating a snapshot of your entire cluster with the cockroach dump command. This creates a human-readable output of SQL statements that can be easily imported into other databases, if so desired. Here’s an example of dumping two tables from the same database:

cockroach dump db1 tbl1 tbl2 > db1_backup.sql

We’re also working on a much more performant, efficient backup-and-restore functionality for our upcoming 1.0 release. The files from the new backup functionality will only be restorable into CockroachDB, however.

Answer 2

the "more performant efficient backup-and-restore functionality" Alex mentioned has been available for awhile now. documentation is here:

https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/backup.html

Cockroach Labs calls the open source version of the database "Cockroach Core", so open source users should note the caveat at the top of the page:

"Core users can only take full backups. To use the other backup features, you need an enterprise license."