How to backup and restore Cosmos DB with Postgres and Citus?

Question

Hello,

We are using Azure Cosmos DB with Postgres using Citus. We would like to know how we can do proper backup and restore to be safe in case of a disaster for business continuity reasons. We have read https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/postgresql/concepts-backup but we are worried about deletion of the cluster itself (accident or otherwise).

We are using management locks to reduce the effects of a disaster but we would like to store a cold backup in a another location. As we understand it, the WAL files are written to Azure Blob Storage but they can only be used to restore the database. We would like to export them in order to be able to restore the database in case the cluster is deleted.

Best regards,

Eric

Answer 1

Hi @Eric Bergqvist Thanks for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

I Understand that you are concerned about the deletion of the cluster and want to store a cold backup in another location.

It looks like you’re already using Azure locks which is the best and recommended way to prevent accidental deletion of Azure resources.

There’s no built-in feature in Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL that allows you to store data in your cluster and managed stored copies. However, you may consider using Postgres and/or Azure tools for manually managed copies of data. For smaller workloads you may try using pg_dump. Azure Data Factory is a more complex setup but can also be used for getting the data out of the cluster.

I hope this information helps

Regards

Geetha