DynamoDB Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) is a powerful backup feature that provides continuous backups of your DynamoDB table data, enabling you to restore your table to any point in time within the last 35 days. This feature is essential for maintaining reliability and business continuity in AWS env…DynamoDB Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) is a powerful backup feature that provides continuous backups of your DynamoDB table data, enabling you to restore your table to any point in time within the last 35 days. This feature is essential for maintaining reliability and business continuity in AWS environments.
When PITR is enabled, DynamoDB automatically creates incremental backups of your table data every second. These backups capture all changes made to your table, including inserts, updates, and deletes. The recovery window spans from the moment you enable PITR up to the current time, with a maximum retention period of 35 days.
Key benefits of PITR include protection against accidental write or delete operations. If an application bug corrupts data or someone accidentally deletes critical items, you can restore the table to a specific second before the incident occurred. This granular recovery capability significantly reduces data loss in disaster scenarios.
To restore data, you specify a target time within the recovery window, and DynamoDB creates a new table containing the data as it existed at that moment. The original table remains unchanged during restoration. The restore process copies table data, local secondary indexes, global secondary indexes, and provisioned capacity settings.
PITR operates independently of on-demand backups, providing an additional layer of protection. While on-demand backups create full table snapshots at specific moments, PITR offers continuous protection with second-level granularity.
From a cost perspective, PITR charges are based on the size of data stored in your table. You pay for the continuous backup storage, which is calculated hourly based on table size.
Enabling PITR is straightforward through the AWS Console, CLI, or SDK. For production workloads and compliance requirements, PITR is considered a best practice for ensuring data durability and meeting recovery point objectives in your disaster recovery strategy.
DynamoDB Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) is a critical feature for ensuring business continuity and data protection in AWS environments. It protects your DynamoDB tables from accidental write or delete operations, application bugs, and human errors. As a SysOps Administrator, understanding PITR is essential because data loss can lead to significant business impact, and having reliable backup and recovery mechanisms is fundamental to maintaining system reliability.
What is DynamoDB Point-in-Time Recovery?
PITR is a continuous backup feature for DynamoDB tables that allows you to restore your table data to any point in time within the last 35 days. Key characteristics include:
• Continuous Backups - Automatically maintains incremental backups of your table • 35-Day Retention - Recovery is possible to any second within the past 35 days • No Performance Impact - Backups occur with no impact on table performance or availability • Per-Table Feature - Must be enabled individually for each table • Restoration Creates New Table - Recovery always creates a new table, not overwriting the original
How DynamoDB Point-in-Time Recovery Works
1. Enabling PITR: • Navigate to DynamoDB console and select your table • Go to the Backups tab • Enable Point-in-time recovery • Can also be enabled via AWS CLI or CloudFormation
2. Backup Process: • Once enabled, DynamoDB continuously backs up your table data • Uses incremental backups to minimize storage costs • Backup window starts from the time PITR is enabled • The earliest restorable time advances as the 35-day window moves forward
3. Recovery Process: • Specify the source table and target table name • Choose the exact date and time for recovery (within the 35-day window) • DynamoDB creates a new table with the recovered data • Recovery time depends on table size
4. What Gets Restored: • Table data and structure • Local secondary indexes (LSIs) • Global secondary indexes (GSIs) • Encryption settings • Provisioned throughput settings
5. What Does NOT Get Restored: • Auto-scaling policies • IAM policies • CloudWatch alarms • Tags • Stream settings • TTL settings
Cost Considerations
• PITR pricing is based on the size of your table • Charged per GB-month for continuous backup storage • Restore operations are charged per GB of data restored • No additional cost for the backup operations themselves
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on DynamoDB Point-in-Time Recovery
1. Remember the 35-Day Limit: If a question asks about recovering data from more than 35 days ago, PITR is not the correct answer. Consider on-demand backups or AWS Backup for longer retention.
2. New Table Creation: Always remember that PITR restores to a new table. Questions may try to trick you by suggesting in-place restoration.
3. Per-Table Enablement: PITR must be enabled on each table individually. It is not enabled by default and is not an account-wide setting.
4. Granularity: PITR allows recovery to any second within the retention period. This is more granular than on-demand backups.
5. No Performance Impact: If a question mentions concerns about backup affecting production performance, remember PITR has no impact on table availability or performance.
6. Recovery Scenarios: PITR is ideal for accidental deletions, application bugs, or corrupted data situations. Look for keywords like accidental, corrupted, or rollback to specific time.
7. Compare with On-Demand Backups: On-demand backups are for long-term retention and compliance, while PITR is for operational recovery within 35 days.
8. Global Tables: When using DynamoDB Global Tables, PITR must be enabled in each region separately.
9. Restoration Time: Be aware that restoration time varies based on table size. Large tables take longer to restore.
10. Integration with AWS Backup: DynamoDB PITR can be managed through AWS Backup for centralized backup management across multiple AWS services.