ApsaraDB RDS:Full backup

Use cases

• Daily data protection: Schedule automatic full backups to protect against hardware failures and accidental data loss. Combined with log backups, they enable PITR to minimize data loss in failure scenarios.

• Pre-operation snapshots: Before schema changes (DDL), application upgrades, or data migrations, trigger a manual backup to create a reliable recovery point. If the operation causes issues, roll back to the pre-operation state quickly.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure that you have:

• An ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance

• Authorization for the service-linked role for Data Backup Service (AliyunServiceRoleForDBS) — required the first time you use the RDS backup service

Billing

Backup storage within the free quota is not charged. Usage beyond the free quota is billed based on actual consumption. For free quota details and pricing, see Backup storage costs.

Limits and notes

• Always on: Full backup is enabled by default and cannot be disabled. Backups run at least twice a week and are retained for at least 7 days.

• Policy changes trigger an immediate backup: Saving a modified backup policy immediately triggers a full backup.

  Important

  Plan policy changes accordingly — a full backup starts as soon as you save the new policy.

• DDL during backup: Avoid DDL operations during a backup. DDL can cause table locks and result in backup failure.

• Backup window: Schedule backups during off-peak hours to reduce the impact on running services.

• Table count limits:

  • More than 50,000 tables: the restoration for individual databases and tables feature is unavailable. The database recovery feature is not affected.

  • More than 600,000 tables: the backup fails.

• Engine version restrictions: Backups cannot be initiated for locked instances running the following minor engine versions:

  • RDS for MySQL 5.1 and 5.5: all minor versions

  • RDS for MySQL 5.6, 5.7, and 8.0: minor versions earlier than 20190815

  To upgrade the major version or minor engine version, see Upgrade database version or Upgrade minor engine version. For locked instance troubleshooting, see What to do when an instance's status is "Locking".

• Read-only instances: Only a local log retention policy can be set. Automatic backup policies are not supported for read-only instances.

View backup progress

After starting a backup, a backup task is generated. To check progress:

1. Go to the Task Hub page.

2. Set Task Type to Manual Instance Backup and filter by Pending or Running status.

To view completed backups, go to Backup and Recovery > Data Backup. The tab lists all completed backup sets with timestamps, retention period end dates, and restore actions. From this page, download a backup file or use it as a restore point.

A backup set appears in the list only after the backup is complete. The retention period for manual backup sets follows the configured Backup Policy.

FAQ

Do backups affect instance performance?

It depends on the edition:

• High-availability Edition, Cluster Edition, and Enterprise Edition: Backups run on the secondary instance, so they do not consume CPU resources or affect the performance of the primary instance. In rare cases when the secondary instance is unavailable, the backup runs on the primary instance instead.

• Basic Edition: The instance runs as a standalone node with no secondary. All backup operations run on that instance, which can reduce its performance during a backup.

Can I disable data backups or log backups?

Data backups cannot be disabled. The minimum configuration is twice per week with a 7-day retention period. Log backups can be disabled — turn off the log backup switch on the Backup Strategy page. To reduce backup volume, see Delete or reduce backups.

Are automatic backups still performed when a pay-as-you-go instance has an overdue payment?

Within the first 7 days of an overdue payment, automatic backups continue. After 7 days, Alibaba Cloud suspends the instance and stops billing. Automatic backups also stop. For more information, see Overdue payments.

Why do backup jobs sometimes fail?

DDL or long-running update statements executed during a backup can cause table locks, which results in backup failure. Avoid DDL operations during a backup window.

Why is my snapshot backup size much larger than my actual data volume?

Cloud disk instances use snapshot backups, and a single snapshot can be significantly larger than the actual data size. All non-empty blocks are included in the snapshot — when data is written in a scattered pattern, more non-empty blocks are created, increasing the snapshot size. The free quota for cloud disk instances is 200% of the instance's storage capacity (50% for instances with Premium Local SSDs).

Because of this, the total backup size shown on the Backup and Recovery page may not match the backup usage figure displayed in the console.

Do backup files use my instance's disk space?

No. Data backups and log backups are stored in Alibaba Cloud backup storage and do not consume your instance's storage space. Backup storage cannot be accessed directly — to download a backup, see Download a backup. Backup storage comes with a free quota; usage beyond the quota is billed. For pricing, see Backup storage costs.

What's next

• Download backups: Download backup files to a local machine or upload them to OSS.

• Data restoration: Restore data to an existing instance, a new instance, or a local database.

• Cross-region backup: Replicate backups to a different region for geo-redundancy.

• Data Disaster Recovery: Use logical backup to automatically back up RDS for MySQL or self-managed MySQL databases with cross-account backup, single-database or single-table granularity, and OSS storage.

API reference

Other engines

• Back up SQL Server data

• Back up PostgreSQL data

• Back up MariaDB data