Export Cloud Backup Snapshot

Note

This feature is not available for M0 Free clusters and Flex clusters. To learn more about which features are unavailable, see Atlas M0 (Free Cluster) Limits.

Atlas lets you export your Cloud Backup snapshots to an object storage service.

To learn how to manage automated backup policies and schedules, see Manage Backup Policies.

Supported Storage Services

Atlas currently supports the following object storage services:

AWS S3 buckets
Azure Blob Storage
Google Cloud Storage buckets

Additionally, Atlas supports exporting snapshots to AWS S3 buckets using PrivateLink.

How Atlas Exports Snapshots

Note

If you export backups to AWS S3, you can enable AWS S3 Object Lock to ensure the immutability of your backup files required for compliance and security. Object locks prevent deletions and modifications of exported backup files.

You can manually export individual snapshots or set up an export policy for automatic export of your snapshots. For automatic exports, you must specify a frequency in your export policy:

Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Yearly

Atlas automatically exports any backup snapshot with the frequency type that matches the export frequency. The exported result is a full backup of that snapshot.

Example

Consider the following:

A backup policy that sets a weekly and monthly snapshot schedule
An export policy that sets a monthly export frequency

Suppose, at the end of the month, the weekly and monthly snapshots happen on the same day. There would be 4 snapshots of which 3 would be weekly snapshots and the fourth snapshot, although treated as a weekly snapshot by Atlas, would also be the monthly snapshot because it happened on the same day. Atlas will export the monthly snapshot only because the export frequency matches the snapshot frequency for that snapshot. To export the weekly snapshots as well, update the export policy to export weekly snapshots also. If the export frequency is set to weekly, Atlas would export all 4 snapshots.

As the export progresses, you may see partial results in your object storage service.

Atlas persists documents in snapshots irrespective of Time to Live settings. You can access these documents from your snapshot past their Time to Live deadline.

To learn about snapshot export pricing, see Snapshot Export Costs.

Files Atlas Uploads

Atlas uploads an empty file to /exported_snapshots/.permissioncheck when you:

Add a new object store for export
Start an export

After Atlas finishes exporting, Atlas uploads a metadata file named .complete and a metadata file named metadata.json for each collection.

Atlas uploads the metadata file named .complete in the following path on your object store:

/exported_snapshots/<orgUUID>/<projectUUID>/<clusterName>/<initiationDateOfSnapshot>/<timestamp>/

Note

By default, Atlas uses organization and project UUIDs in the path for the metadata files. To use organization and project names instead of UUIDs, set the useOrgAndGroupNamesInExportPrefix flag to true via the API. Atlas replaces any spaces with underscores (_) and removes any characters that might require special handling and characters to avoid from the organization and project names in the path.

The .complete metadata file is in JSON format and contains the following fields:

Field	Description
`orgId`	Unique 24-hexadecimal digit string that identifies the Atlas organization.
`orgName`	Name of the Atlas organization.
`groupId`	Unique 24-hexadecimal digit string that identifies the project in the Atlas organization.
`groupName`	Name of the Atlas project.
`clusterUniqueId`	Unique 24-hexadecimal digit string that identifies the Atlas cluster.
`clusterName`	Name of the Atlas project.
`snapshotInitiationDate`	Date when snapshot was taken.
`totalFiles`	Total number of files uploaded to the object store.
`labels`	Labels of the cluster whose snapshot was exported.
`customData`	Custom data, if any, that you specified when creating the export job.

Example

{
  "orgId": "60512d6f65e4047fe0842095",
  "orgName": "org1",
  "groupId": "60512dac65e4047fe084220f",
  "groupName": "group1",
  "clusterUniqueId": "60512dac65e4047fe0842212",
  "clusterName": "cluster0",
  "snapshotInitiationDate": "2020-04-03T05:50:29.321Z"
  "totalFiles": 23,
  "labels": [
    {
      "key": "key1",
      "value": "xyz"
    },
    {
      "key": "key2",
      "value": "xyzuio"
    }
  ],
  "customData": [
    {
      "key": "key1",
      "value": "xyz"
    },
    {
      "key": "key2",
      "value": "xyzuio"
    }
  ]
}

Atlas uploads the metadata.json file for each collection in the following path on your object store:

/exported_snapshots/<orgUUID>/<projectUUID>/<clusterName>/<initiationDateOfSnapshot>/<timestamp>/<dbName>/<collectionName>/metadata.json

Note

By default, Atlas uses organization and project UUIDs in the path for the metadata files. To use organization and project names instead of UUIDs, set the useOrgAndGroupNamesInExportPrefix flag via the API to true. Atlas replaces any spaces with underscores (_) and removes any characters that might require special handling and characters to avoid from the organization and project names in the path.

The metadata file is in JSON format and contains the following fields:

Field	Description
`collectionName`	Human-readable label that identifies the collection.
`indexes`	List of all the indexes on the collection in the format returned by db.collection.getIndexes command.
`options`	Configuration options defined on the collection. To learn more about the options, see db.createCollection() command.
`type`	(Optional) Type of collection. This field is only supported for time series collections, with a value of `timeseries`. Leave this field unset for standard collections. Atlas doesn't support export of `view` type collections.
`uuid`	Collection's UUID. To learn more about UUID, see UUID.

Example

{
  "options":{
    "viewOn":"othercol",
    "pipeline":[{"$project":{"namez":"$name"}}]
  },
  "indexes":[],
  "collectionName":"viewcol",
  "type":"view"
}

{
  "options":{
    "timeseries":{
      "timeField":"timestamp",
      "granularity":"seconds",
      "bucketMaxSpanSeconds":{"$numberInt":"3600"}
    }
  },
  "indexes":[],
  "collectionName":"timeseriescol",
  "type":"timeseries"
}

{
  "indexes": [
    {
      "v":{"$numberInt":"2"},
      "key":{
        "_id":{"$numberInt":"1"}
      },
      "name":"_id_"
    }
  ],
  "uuid":"342c40a937c34c478bab03de8ce44f3e",
  "collectionName":"somecol"
}

If an export job fails:

Atlas doesn't automatically try to export again.
Atlas doesn't remove any partial data in your object store.

Exported Data Format

Atlas uploads gzip-compressed Extended JSON (v2) documents. Atlas doesn't upload these documents in order. The following is the path to the files on your object store:

/exported_snapshots/<orgName>/<projectName>/<clusterName>/<initiationDateOfSnapshot>/<timestamp>/<dbName>/<collectionName>/<shardName>.<increment>.json.gz

Where:

`<orgName>`	Name of your Atlas organization.
`<projectName>`	Name of your Atlas project.
`<clusterName>`	Name of your Atlas cluster.
`<initiationDateOfSnapshot>`	Date when snapshot was taken.
`<timestamp>`	Timestamp when the export job was created.
`<dbName>`	Name of the database in the Atlas cluster.
`<collectionName>`	Name of the Atlas collection.
`<shardName>`	Name of the replica set. For sharded collections, this is the name of the primary shard.
`<increment>`	Count that is incremented as chunks are uploaded. Starts at `0`.

Limitations

You can't perform the following actions:

Export fallback snapshots.
Have more than one active export per snapshot.
Export view collections, or system collections, with the exception of <database>.system.js collections.
Export snapshots from clusters in an Atlas project with IP-restricted Encryption at Rest enabled.
Export snapshots from clusters hosted on Azure or Google Cloud Storage in projects configured for Private Endpoints.

Required Access

To manage your Cloud Backup snapshots, you must have Project Backup Manager or Project Owner access to the project.

Users with Organization Owner access must add themselves as a Project Backup Manager or Project Owner to the project before they can manage Cloud Backup snapshots.

Export Management

Cloud Provider

Connection Type

Interface

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