Configure Atlas to Automatically Copy Snapshots to Other Regions

Required Access

To modify or delete backup policies, you must have Project Owner access to the project. Users with Organization Owner access must add themselves as a Project Owner to the project before they can modify or delete backup policies.

Procedure

To configure automatic snapshot distribution in other regions:

1. Navigate to the Backup Policy tab. In the Additional Backup Copies section, click the arrow button to expand the pane.

2. Toggle Copy to other regions on. You will see a table of distribution policies pre-populated with the cluster's current regions.

   Note

   For a global cluster, you can enable or disable this setting independently for each zone.

3. In the Copy to other regions table, click Choose a region in the Region column of the row under your current region and select the region to distribute snapshots to.

   Note

   You can select regions only for the same cloud provider as the primary region. For example, if your cluster is in the AWS us-east-1 region, you can distribute snapshots only to other AWS regions supported by Atlas. For global clusters, each zone may have nodes in multiple cloud providers. When you select regions in which to store copied snapshots, you can select only regions in the same cloud provider as the zone's primary region.

4. In the Snapshots column, click the arrow to view the available snapshot policies for the cluster. Atlas displays options based on the backup policies for the cluster.

   For example, if you set the cluster with a Daily backup policy of taking daily 5:00 PM snapshots, checking Daily in the Snapshots column enables snapshot distribution of daily 5:00 PM snapshots. You can't set the snapshot distribution policy to a different frequency or timing than its underlying backup policy.

   Note

   If overlapping policy items generate the same snapshot, Atlas associates the snapshot with the policy item with the longest retention time.

   For example, if the policy speficies a daily snapshot with two-day retention and a weekly snapshot every Saturday with three-week retention, then Atlas displays a frequency of Weekly in the Frequency column on the Snapshots page for the snapshot taken on Saturday and retains the snapshot for three weeks. This is because the weekly policy item has a longer retention time than the daily policy item.

   You can enable or disable any combination of the available policies on a region-by-region basis.

   Example

   The following table describes the snapshot distribution policy for a cluster with enabled storage nodes in the AWS regions us-east-2, us-west-1, and us-west-2:

   Region	Hourly	Daily	Weekly	Monthly	Yearly	On Demand	Point-in-Time
   us-east-1 (Original)	Every 6 hours	Every 2 days	Every Sunday	Last day of the month	Dec. 1st	Yes	Yes
   us-east-2 (Copy)	Disabled	Disabled	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled	Disabled	No
   us-west-1 (Copy)	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled	Yes
   us-west-2 (Copy)	Enabled	Enabled	Disabled	Disabled	Disabled	Enabled	Yes

5. If you enabled Continuous Cloud Backup for the cluster, you can enable oplog distribution for each additional region. If you disabled Continuous Cloud Backup for the cluster, you can't enable oplog distribution for additional regions.

To delete a policy for snapshot distribution to other regions:

1. In the Action column, click .

2. In the dialog box, select either Keep all snapshots in this region or Delete all snapshots in this region, and click Confirm. If you choose to keep snapshots in a disabled region, the snapshots persist until their scheduled expiration date.

Alternatively, to disable all snapshot distribution policies within a single-region cluster or within a global cluster zone, click the Copy to other regions toggle. As with deleting an individual policy, you can choose to keep or delete all copied snapshots for that cluster or zone.