Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

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 indexes), cluster metadata (index templates and aliases), and index data (all documents and data stored in your indexes).

OpenSearch Serverless provides automatic hourly backups with no manual configuration, zero maintenance overhead, no additional storage costs, quick recovery from accidental data loss, and the ability to restore specific indexes from a snapshot.

Before working with snapshots, understand these important considerations. Creating a snapshot takes time to complete and isn't instantaneous. New documents or updates during snapshot creation will not be included in the snapshot. You can restore snapshots only to their original collection and not to a new one. When restored, indexes receive new UUIDs that differ from their original versions. You can run only one restore operation at a time, and you can't start multiple restore operations on the same collection simultaneously. Attempting to restore indexes during an active restore operation causes the operation to fail. During a restore operation, your requests to the indexes 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.

You can configure policies using the following Amazon CLI commands:

Here is a sample CLI command for creating an access policy. In the command, replace the example content with your specific information.

aws opensearchserverless create-access-policy \
--type data \
--name Example-data-access-policy \
--region aws-region \
--policy '[
  {
    "Rules": [
      {
        "Resource": [
          "collection/Example-collection"
        ],
        "Permission": [
          "aoss:DescribeSnapshot",
          "aoss:RestoreSnapshot",
          "aoss:DescribeCollectionItems"
        ],
        "ResourceType": "collection"
      }
    ],
    "Principal": [
      "arn:aws-cn:iam::111122223333:user/UserName"
    ],
    "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. You don't need to take any action. Each snapshot includes all indexes in the collection. After OpenSearch Serverless creates snapshots, you can list them and review the details of the snapshot using the following procedures.

List snapshots

Use the following procedures to list all snapshots in a collection and review their details.

Console

1. Open the Amazon OpenSearch Service console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/aos/.

2. In the left navigation pane, choose Serverless, then choose Collections.

3. Choose the name of your collection to open its details page.

4. Choose the Snapshots tab to display all generated snapshots.

5. Review the snapshot information including:

   • Snapshot ID - Unique identifier for the snapshot

   • Status - Current state (Available, In Progress)

   • Created time - When the snapshot was taken

Amazon CLI

• 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    indexes successful_shards failed_shards total_shards
  snapshot-ExampleSnapshotID1     SUCCESS 1737964331  07:52:11   1737964382 07:53:02    50.4s       1                                             
  snapshot-ExampleSnapshotID2     SUCCESS 1737967931  08:52:11   1737967979 08:52:59    47.7s       2                                             
  snapshot-ExampleSnapshotID3     SUCCESS 1737971531  09:52:11   1737971581 09:53:01    49.1s       3                                             
  snapshot-ExampleSnapshotID4 IN_PROGRESS 1737975131  10:52:11   -          -            4.8d       3

Get snapshot details

Use the following procedures to retrieve detailed information about a specific snapshot.

Console

1. Open the Amazon OpenSearch Service console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/aos/.

2. In the left navigation pane, choose Serverless, then choose Collections.

3. Choose the name of your collection to open its details page.

4. Choose the Snapshots tab.

5. Choose the snapshot job ID to display detailed information about the snapshot, including metadata, indexes included, and timing information.

Amazon CLI

• Use the following command to retrieve information about a snapshot. In the command, replace the example content with your specific information.

  GET _snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot/

  Example Request:

  GET _snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot-ExampleSnapshotID1/

  Example Response:

  {
      "snapshots": [
          {
              "snapshot": "snapshot-ExampleSnapshotID1-5e01-4423-9833Example",
              "uuid": "Example-5e01-4423-9833-9e9eb757Example",
              "version_id": 136327827,
              "version": "2.11.0",
              "remote_store_index_shallow_copy": true,
              "indexes": [
                  "Example-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
              }
          }
      ]
  }

The snapshot response includes several key fields: id provides a unique identifier for the snapshot operation, status returns the current state SUCCESS or IN_PROGRESS, duration indicates the time taken to complete the snapshot operation, and indexes returns the number of indexes included in the snapshot.

Restoring from a snapshot

Restoring from a snapshot recovers data from a previously taken backup. This process is crucial for disaster recovery and data management in OpenSearch Serverless. Before restoring, understand that restored indexes will have different UUIDs than their original versions, snapshots can only be restored to their original collection (cross-collection restoration is not supported), and restore operations will impact cluster performance so plan accordingly.

Use the following procedures to restore backed up indexes from a snapshot.

Console

1. Open the Amazon OpenSearch Service console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/aos/.

2. In the left navigation pane, choose Serverless, then choose Collections.

3. Choose the name of your collection to open its details page.

4. Choose the Snapshots tab to display available snapshots.

5. Choose the snapshot you want to restore from, then choose Restore from snapshot.

6. In the Restore from snapshot dialog:

   • For Snapshot name, verify the selected snapshot ID.

   • For Snapshot scope, choose either:

     • All indexes in collection - Restore all indexes from the snapshot

     • Specific indexes - Select individual indexes to restore

   • For Destination, choose the collection to restore to.

   • (Optional) Configure Rename settings to rename restored indexes:

     • Do not rename - Keep original index names

     • Add prefix to restored index names - Add a prefix to avoid conflicts

     • Rename using regular expression - Use advanced renaming patterns

   • (Optional) Configure Notification settings to be notified when the restore completes or encounters errors.

7. Choose Save to start the restore operation.

8. Monitor the restore progress in the Restore activity tab, which shows the status, start time, completion time, and affected indexes.

Amazon CLI

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. In the command, replace the example content with your specific information.

   GET _snapshot/aoss-automated/snapshot-ExampleSnapshotID1/

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-ExampleSnapshotID1-5e01-4423-9833Example/_restore
   {
     "indexes": "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