Provision an Azure Cosmos DB account with continuous backup and point in time restore

  • Article

APPLIES TO: NoSQL MongoDB

Azure Cosmos DB's point-in-time restore feature helps you to recover from an accidental change within a container, restore a deleted resource, or restore into any region where backups existed. The continuous backup mode allows you to restore to any point of time within the last 30 or 7 days. How far back you can go in time depends on the tier of the continuous mode for the account.

This article explains how to provision an account with continuous backup and point in time restore using Azure portal, PowerShell, CLI and Resource Manager templates.

Note

You can provision continuous backup mode account only if the following conditions are true:

  • If the account is of type API for NoSQL or MongoDB.
  • If the account is of type API for Table or Gremlin.
  • If the account has a single write region.

Provision using Azure portal

When creating a new Azure Cosmos DB account, in the Backup policy tab, choose continuous mode to enable the point in time restore functionality for the new account. With the point-in-time restore, data is restored to a new account, currently you can't restore to an existing account.

Provision an Azure Cosmos DB account with continuous backup configuration.

Provision using Azure PowerShell

For PowerShell and CLI commands, the tier value is optional, if it isn't already provided. If not provided the account backup will be retained for 30 days. The tiers are represented by the values Continuous7Days or Continuous30Days.

  1. Install the latest version of Azure PowerShell

    • Before provisioning the account, install any version of Azure PowerShell higher than 6.2.0. For more information about the latest version of Azure PowerShell, see latest version of Azure PowerShell.
    • For provisioning the Continuous7Days tier, you'll need to install the preview version of the module by running Install-Module -Name Az.CosmosDB -AllowPrerelease.

  2. Next connect to your Azure account and select the required subscription with the following commands:

    1. Sign into Azure using the following command:

      Connect-AzAccount -Environment AzureChinaCloud

    2. Select a specific subscription with the following command:

      Select-AzSubscription -Subscription <SubscriptionName>

API for NoSQL account

To provision an account with continuous backup, add the argument -BackupPolicyType Continuous along with the regular provisioning command.

The following cmdlet assumes a single region write account, Pitracct, in the in China North region in the MyRG resource group. The account has continuous backup policy enabled. Continuous backup is configured at the Continuous7days tier:

New-AzCosmosDBAccount `
  -ResourceGroupName "MyRG" `
  -Location "China North" `
  -BackupPolicyType Continuous `
  -ContinuousTier Continuous7Days `
  -Name "pitracct" `
  -ApiKind "Sql"

API for MongoDB

The following cmdlet is an example of continuous backup account configured with the Continuous30days tier:

New-AzCosmosDBAccount `
  -ResourceGroupName "MyRG" `
  -Location "China North" `
  -BackupPolicyType Continuous `
  -ContinuousTier Continuous30Days `
  -Name "Pitracct" `
  -ApiKind "MongoDB" `
  -ServerVersion "3.6"

API for Table account

To provision an account with continuous backup, add an argument -BackupPolicyType Continuous along with the regular provisioning command.

The following cmdlet is an example of continuous backup policy with the Continuous7days tier:

New-AzCosmosDBAccount `
  -ResourceGroupName "MyRG" `
  -Location "China North" `
  -BackupPolicyType Continuous `
  -ContinuousTier Continuous7Days `
  -Name "pitracct" `
  -ApiKind "Table"

API for Gremlin account

To provision an account with continuous backup, add an argument -BackupPolicyType Continuous along with the regular provisioning command.

The following cmdlet is an example of an account with continuous backup policy configured with the Continuous30days tier:

New-AzCosmosDBAccount `
  -ResourceGroupName "MyRG" `
  -Location "China North" `
  -BackupPolicyType Continuous `
  -ContinuousTier Continuous30Days `
  -Name "pitracct" `
  -ApiKind "Gremlin"

Provision using Azure CLI

For PowerShell and CLI commands tier value is optional, if it isn't provided – the account backup will be retained for 30 days. The tiers are represented by Continuous7Days or Continuous30Days.

Before provisioning the account, install Azure CLI with the following steps:

  1. Install the latest version of Azure CLI, see Azure CLI

  2. Sign in and select your subscription

    • Sign into your Azure account with az login command.
    • Select the required subscription using az account set -s <subscriptionguid> command.

API for NoSQL account

To provision a API for NoSQL account with continuous backup, an extra argument --backup-policy-type Continuous should be passed along with the regular provisioning command. The following command is an example of a single region write account named Pitracct with continuous backup policy and Continuous7days tier:


az cosmosdb create \
  --name Pitracct \
  --resource-group MyRG \
  --backup-policy-type Continuous \
  --continuous-tier "Continuous7Days" \
  --default-consistency-level Session \
  --locations regionName="China North"

API for MongoDB

The following command shows an example of a single region write account named Pitracct with continuous backup policy and Continuous30days tier:

az cosmosdb create \
  --name Pitracct \
  --kind MongoDB \
  --resource-group MyRG \
  --server-version "3.6" \
  --backup-policy-type Continuous \
  --continuous-tier "Continuous30Days" \
  --default-consistency-level Session \
  --locations regionName="China North"

API for Table account

The following command shows an example of a single region write account named Pitracct with continuous backup policy and Continuous30days tier:

az cosmosdb create \
  --name Pitracct \
  --kind GlobalDocumentDB  \
  --resource-group MyRG \
  --capabilities EnableTable \ 
  --backup-policy-type Continuous \
  --continuous-tier "Continuous30Days" \
  --default-consistency-level Session \
  --locations regionName="China North"

API for Gremlin account

The following command shows an example of a single region write account named Pitracct with continuous backup policy and Continuous7days tier created in China North region under MyRG resource group:

az cosmosdb create \
  --name Pitracct \
  --kind GlobalDocumentDB  \
  --resource-group MyRG \
  --capabilities EnableGremlin \ 
  --backup-policy-type Continuous \
  --continuous-tier "Continuous7Days" \
  --default-consistency-level Session \
  --locations regionName="China North"

Provision using Resource Manager template

You can use Azure Resource Manager templates to deploy an Azure Cosmos DB account with continuous mode. When defining the template to provision an account, include the backupPolicy and tier parameter as shown in the following example, tier can be Continuous7Days or Continuous30Days :

{
  "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
  "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
  "resources": [
    {
      "name": "ademo-pitr1",
      "type": "Microsoft.DocumentDB/databaseAccounts",
      "apiVersion": "2023-04-15",
      "location": "China North",
      "properties": {
        "locations": [
          {
            "locationName": "China North"
          }
        ],
        "backupPolicy":{
        "type":"Continuous", 
        "continuousModeProperties":{
        "tier":"Continuous7Days"
        }
        } 
        "databaseAccountOfferType": "Standard"
        } }

Next, deploy the template by using Azure PowerShell or CLI. The following example shows how to deploy the template with a CLI command:

az deployment group create -g <ResourceGroup> --template-file <ProvisionTemplateFilePath>

Next steps