Reference Guide

4.4.1
Restore to a Point in Time
The automated backup option allows you to restore an instance to a point in time. When you create the
instance and choose the PITR recovery method, you specify the length of the retention period, which is a
rolling most-recent period up to a maximum of 35 days.
Figure 3 is an example of this process. In the instance, a 7-day retention period has been specified.
• On the creation date a full backup is created, and transaction logging starts.
• Every five minutes differential changes and logs are sent to backup storage.
• After 24 hours the changes are rolled into a backup, then the retention window moves forward
one day.
• When you specify the point in time you want to "roll back" to, the logs provide the necessary
information to assemble a complete backup, which is then stored in a new instance. To create
the recovery instance you basically repeat the steps to launch a new instance. The major
difference is that you can pick a different plan size (Small, Medium) if you desire. You must
provide the proper number of licenses to provision the new instance. See What are the licensing
requirements?
Note that the PITR 24-hour backup is not the same as a daily snapshot or a manual snapshot.
• For the daily snapshot, you set the preferred snapshot time and time zone, and the snapshot is
taken every day or week at that time. The snapshot is a full record of the entire instance. Once
made, it has no dependence on the source instance. It can be restored any time.
• For PITR, the time depends upon when the instance was created.The PITR "daily" backup is also
a full record of the instance, but it contains markers that allow you to find the point in time,
within five minutes. The PITR recovery information can only be accessed from the instance. If
the instance is deleted, the backup information is automatically deleted from the Recovery
Storage.
In Figure 3
, an undesirable event has occurred on the 7th day, so you want to recover the instance to a
time immediately before the event. In this case the backup would consist of the previous 24-hour
backups and any incremental backups needed to bring you to the desired point in time.
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