Backing up collections using snapshots - Amazon OpenSearch Service
Required permissionsWorking with snapshotsRestoring from a snapshot

Backing up collections using snapshots

Snapshots are point-in-time backups of your Amazon OpenSearch Serverless collections that provide disaster recovery capabilities. OpenSearch Serverless automatically creates and manages snapshots of your collections, ensuring business continuity and data protection. Each snapshot contains:

  • Index metadata: Settings and mappings for your indices

  • Cluster metadata: Index templates and aliases

  • Index data: All documents and data stored in your indices

Key benefits

  • Automatic hourly backups with no manual configuration required

  • Zero maintenance overhead

  • No additional storage costs

  • Quick recovery from accidental data loss

  • Ability to restore specific indices from a snapshot

Important considerations

  • Creating a snapshot isn't instantaneous and requires time to complete.

  • New documents or updates during snapshot creation might not be included in the snapshot.

  • You can restore snapshots only to their original collection and not to a new one.

  • When restored, indices receive new UUIDs that differ from their original versions.

  • You can run only one restore operation at a time.

  • You can't start multiple restore operations on the same collection at the same time. Attempting to restore indices during an active restore operation causes the operation to fail.

  • During a restore operation, your requests to the indices fail.

Required permissions

To work with snapshots, configure the following permissions in your data access policy. For more information about data access policies, see Data access policies versus IAM policies.

Data Access Policy APIs
aoss:DescribeSnapshot

GET /_cat/snapshots

GET /_cat/snapshots/aoss-automated/

GET _snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot/
aoss:RestoreSnapshot POST /_snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot/_restore
aoss:DescribeCollectionItems GET /_cat/recovery

You can configure policies using the following AWS CLI commands:

  1. create-access-policy

  2. delete-access-policy

  3. get-access-policy

  4. update-access-policy

Here is a sample CLI command for creating an access policy:

aws opensearchserverless create-access-policy \
--type data \
--name AWSExample-data-access-policy \
--region us-west-2 \
--policy '[
  {
    "Rules": [
      {
        "Resource": [
          "collection/AWSExample-collection"
        ],
        "Permission": [
          "aoss:DescribeSnapshot",
          "aoss:RestoreSnapshot",
          "aoss:DescribeCollectionItems"
        ],
        "ResourceType": "collection"
      }
    ],
    "Principal": [
      "arn:aws:iam::AWSExample-account-ID:user/AWSExample-user"
    ],
    "Description": "Data policy to support snapshot operations."
  }
]'

Working with snapshots

By default, when you create a new collection, OpenSearch Serverless automatically creates snapshots every hour. No action is required on your part. Each snapshot includes all indices in the collection. After OpenSearch Serverless creates snapshots, you can list them and view the details of the snapshot using the following commands.

Listing snapshots

Use the following command to list all snapshots in a collection:

GET /_cat/snapshots/aoss-automated/

OpenSearch Serverless returns a response like the following:


id                                 status  start_epoch start_time end_epoch  end_time    duration    indices successful_shards failed_shards total_shards
snapshot-AWSExampleSnapshotID1     SUCCESS 1737964331  07:52:11   1737964382 07:53:02    50.4s       1                                             
snapshot-AWSExampleSnapshotID2     SUCCESS 1737967931  08:52:11   1737967979 08:52:59    47.7s       2                                             
snapshot-AWSExampleSnapshotID3     SUCCESS 1737971531  09:52:11   1737971581 09:53:01    49.1s       3                                             
snapshot-AWSExampleSnapshotID4 IN_PROGRESS 1737975131  10:52:11   -          -            4.8d       3

Get snapshots

Retrieves information about a snapshot.

GET _snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot/

Example Request

GET _snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot-AWSExampleSnapshotID1/

Example Response

{
    "snapshots": [
        {
            "snapshot": "snapshot-AWSExampleSnapshotID1-5e01-4423-9833Example",
            "uuid": "AWSExample-5e01-4423-9833-9e9eb757Example",
            "version_id": 136327827,
            "version": "2.11.0",
            "remote_store_index_shallow_copy": true,
            "indices": [
                "AWSExample-index-0117"
            ],
            "data_streams": [],
            "include_global_state": true,
            "metadata": {},
            "state": "SUCCESS",
            "start_time": "2025-01-27T09:52:11.953Z",
            "start_time_in_millis": 1737971531953,
            "end_time": "2025-01-27T09:53:01.062Z",
            "end_time_in_millis": 1737971581062,
            "duration_in_millis": 49109,
            "failures": [],
            "shards": {
                "total": 0,
                "failed": 0,
                "successful": 0
            }
        }
    ]
}

Understanding snapshot response fields

id

A unique identifier for the snapshot operation.

status

The current state of the snapshot operation. Possible values include:

  • SUCCESS

  • IN_PROGRESS

duration

The time taken to complete the snapshot operation.

indices

The number of indices included in the snapshot.

Restoring from a snapshot

Restoring from a snapshot allows you to recover data from a previously taken backup. This process is crucial for disaster recovery and data management in OpenSearch Serverless.

Important considerations

  1. Restored indices will have different UUIDs than their original versions.

  2. Snapshots can only be restored to their original collection. Cross-collection restoration is not supported.

  3. Restore operations may impact cluster performance. Plan accordingly.

To restore backed up incidices from a snapshot

  1. Run the following command to identify the appropriate snapshot.

    GET /_snapshot/aoss-automated/_all

    For a smaller list of snapshots, run the following command.

    GET /_cat/snapshots/aoss-automated/

  2. Run the following command to verify the details of the snapshot before restoring.

    GET _snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot-AWSExampleSnapshotID1/

  3. Run the following command to restore from a specific snapshot.

    POST /_snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot-ID/_restore

    You can customize the restore operation by including a request body. Here's an example.

    POST /_snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot-AWSExampleSnapshotID1-5e01-4423-9833Example/_restore
{
  "indices": "opensearch-dashboards*,my-index*",
  "ignore_unavailable": true,
  "include_global_state": false,
  "include_aliases": false,
  "rename_pattern": "opensearch-dashboards(.+)",
  "rename_replacement": "restored-opensearch-dashboards$1"
}

  4. Run the following command to view the restore progress.

    GET /_cat/recovery
Note

When restoring a snapshot with a command that includes a request body, you can use the following parameters to control the restore behavior:

indices

Specifies which indices to restore. This parameter supports wildcard patterns.

ignore_unavailable

Allows the restore operation to continue even if an index in the snapshot is missing.

include_global_state

Determines whether to restore the cluster state.

include_aliases

Controls whether to restore associated aliases.

rename_pattern and rename_replacement

Allows you to rename indices during the restore operation.