absctl release notes

absctl 1.0.0

February 2026 | Download

This is the initial release of absctl, a unified backup and restore tool for Aerospike databases. It is the next-generation evolution of the legacy asbackup and asrestore utilities, consolidated into a single binary with native cloud storage support and improved operational controls.

Highlights

Unified CLI

Backup and restore consolidated into one tool: absctl backup and absctl restore
YAML configuration file support for scripted and scheduled operations
Structured JSON logging for log aggregation pipelines

Improved partition-based scanning

Backups use balanced partition-based scans with configurable parallelism (--parallel) for efficient hardware utilization, ensuring minimal and balanced load across all Aerospike cluster nodes:

Parallel partition scanning: Configurable parallelism (1-32 workers) with intelligent partition distribution
Partition filtering: Back up specific partition ranges or individual partitions
Minimal cluster impact: Rate limiting (RPS and bandwidth) to prevent backup operations from affecting production workloads
Resumable backups: State file support for continuing interrupted backups from the last checkpoint

Storage backend support

Flexible storage options for backup and restore:

Local disk: Direct backup to local filesystem with configurable buffer sizes
Amazon S3: Full support including storage classes (Standard, Glacier, Intelligent-Tiering, etc.), multipart uploads, and MinIO compatibility via endpoint override
Google Cloud Storage (GCS): Native GCP bucket integration
Azure Blob Storage: Complete Azure container support with both account key and Azure Active Directory authentication

Cloud backups do not require intermediate local storage.

AZ-aware backup

Backup node selection to optimize network topology and reduce costs:

--prefer-racks: Prioritize reading from specific rack IDs while still backing up all data
--rack-list: Back up exclusively from specified racks for complete traffic isolation

Prevents cross-availability-zone network traffic, reducing latency and cloud egress costs.

Additional features

TLS/mTLS for cluster connections
AES-128/256 encryption for backup files
ZSTD compression
Aerospike Secret Agent integration for credential management

Backward compatibility

Backup files (.asb) created by asbackup can be restored with absctl
Most CLI flags preserved from legacy tools

For migration details, see Legacy migration.