Backup Maintenance and Cleanup

Manage backup lifecycle and clean up old backups to control storage usage.

Identifying backup chains

Backup directories are named with timestamps and suffixes (_full or _incremental). Incremental backups belong to the most recent full backup that precedes them chronologically.

# List backups sorted by time
ydb scheme ls .backups/collections/production_backups/ | sort

Example output:

20250601120000Z_full        # Chain 1: full backup
20250601130000Z_incremental # Chain 1: incremental (belongs to 20250601 full)
20250602070000Z_incremental # Chain 1: incremental (belongs to 20250601 full)
20250608120000Z_full        # Chain 2: new full backup starts new chain
20250608130000Z_incremental # Chain 2: incremental (belongs to 20250608 full)

When you create a new full backup, it starts a new chain. All incrementals created after that full backup (until the next full) belong to that chain.

Manual cleanup

Remove old backup chains when they are no longer needed:

# Remove old backup directories
ydb scheme rmdir -r .backups/collections/production_backups/20250601120000Z_full/

# Always remove complete chains, never partial chains
# Example: Remove old full backup and all its incrementals
ydb scheme rmdir -r .backups/collections/production_backups/20250601120000Z_full/
ydb scheme rmdir -r .backups/collections/production_backups/20250601130000Z_incremental/
ydb scheme rmdir -r .backups/collections/production_backups/20250602070000Z_incremental/

Dropping a collection

Remove an entire backup collection when it's no longer needed:

-- Drop a collection when no longer needed (removes collection and all backups)
DROP BACKUP COLLECTION old_collection_name;

Safe cleanup workflow

1. Create a new full backup
2. Verify the new backup is complete
3. Export old backup chains to external storage if needed
4. Delete old backup chains (full backup + all its incrementals together)

Storage management tips

• Monitor storage growth: Track backup storage usage regularly
• Set retention policies: Define how long to keep backup chains
• Start new chains periodically: Create new full backups weekly or bi-weekly to limit chain length
• Export before deleting: Always export to external storage before removing cluster backups

Next steps

• Validating and Testing Backups
• Exporting Backups to External Storage