absctl backup
absctl backup backs up data from Aerospike Database according to a user-defined scope of specific namespaces, sets, or both.
The scope supports further refinement with partition or time-based filters.
It scans the database and fetches matching records, capturing essential data needed for recovery and ignoring non-critical system or secondary data.
As it identifies records for backup, it serializes the data into a predefined format and writes it to a backup file or directory. Serialization converts the in-memory representation of records into a stable format that can be safely stored on disk.
absctl backup supports backing up locally or to cloud storage (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage).
absctl backup reads its configuration from a YAML file passed with the --config flag. Legacy astools.conf INI configuration files are not supported.
Limitations
readprivileges or higher are required. See Configuring access control for more information.- In directory mode, each worker writes its own sequence of backup files. The
--file-limitsetting applies per worker: a worker starts a new file when its current file reaches the limit. Workers do not share or append to each other’s partially filled files, so the final file for a worker may be smaller than--file-limit. The size check occurs before each write, so files rotate after reaching approximately--file-limitMiB, except that the final file for a worker may be smaller. - With higher
--parallelvalues, it’s normal to produce more and smaller files because workers finish at different times. - Zstandard (
zstd) is the only compression algorithm thatabsctl backupsupports.
Default backup content
absctl backup backs up the following data by default:
- Keys
- Key metadata: digest, TTL, generation count, and key
- Regular bins: String, Integer, Boolean, and Bytes
- Collection data type (CDT) bins: List and Map
- GeoJSON data type bins
- HyperLogLog data type bins
- Secondary index definitions
- User-defined function (UDF) modules
When backing up to a directory, metadata for UDFs and secondary indexes is stored in separate metadata_*.asb files. When using --output-file, record data and metadata are written to a single .asb file.