A Cloud Platform application has three principal parts: code, databases, and files. There are several types of backups available on Cloud Platform:
Note
For information about backups in Site Factory, see Backing up sites.
Automated database backups
Daily backups from the last three days are always available. You can take more backups at any time, for example, for critical stages of development. You should also periodically check to ensure that backups complete as expected and test if you can restore websites from a backup copy.
Cloud Platform creates daily backups of all databases in all environments and keeps them for three days. These backups are listed as Automatic (Daily) on the Databases page in the Cloud Platform user interface. These daily backups are required and cannot be disabled. For environments running on Cloud Next technologies, automated database backups are always generated overnight based on the regional location of the infrastructure.
On-demand database backups
You can take on-demand backups of any database:
These backups are listed as Manual backups on the Databases page in the Cloud Platform user interface. Cloud Platform keeps your on-demand backups until you delete them. Your backup copies count against the storage space limit associated with your subscription.
Taking a database backup on an application’s Environments page
Select your application.
On the card for the environment you want to back up, select the Back up databases icon.
In the list of databases, do one of the following:
To take backup of specific databases, select the checkboxes corresponding to those databases.
To take backup for all databases, select the Select All checkbox.
Select Continue.
In the confirmation dialog box, select Back up.
Taking a database backup on an environment’s Overview page
Access a specific environment in your application.
In the Databases card, select Back up.
In the list of databases, do one of the following:
To take backup of specific databases, select the checkboxes corresponding to those databases.
To take backup for all databases, select the Select All checkbox.
Select Continue.
In the confirmation dialog box, select Back up.
Taking a database backup on the Databases page
Access a specific environment in your application, and click Databases.
Do one of the following:
To take the backup of a single database, locate the database, click the Kebab menu, and select the corresponding Back up option.
To take the backup of multiple databases, select the databases and click Back up.
In the Back up a databases dialog box, select Back up.
The backup process may take a few minutes.
To view the backup you created, select the databases for which you took the backup earlier.
The system displays all the backups on the Backups tab.
Downloading database backups
Note
For information about determining the database name for a website hosted by Site Factory, see Website metadata.
To download a specific backup of a database:
Access a specific environment in your application, and click Databases.
Select the database for which you want to download the backup.
On the Backups tab, locate the backup that you want to download, click the Kebab menu, and select the corresponding Download option.
In the confirmation box, click Download.
To download the latest backup of a database:
Access a specific environment in your application, and click Databases.
Click Download latest backup for the database that you want to download.
In the confirmation box, click Download.
Restoring database backups
Note
Ensure that the database restore location has more size than the size of the database.
To restore database backups:
Access a specific environment in your application, and click Databases.
Select the database that contains the backup that you want to restore.
On the Backups tab, locate the backup that you want to restore, click the Kebab menu, and select the corresponding Restore option.
In the confirmation box, click Restore.
Deleting database backups
To delete database backups:
Access a specific environment in your application, and click Databases.
Select the database that contains the backup that you want to delete.
On the Backups tab, locate the backup that you want to delete, click the Kebab menu, and select the corresponding Remove option.
In the confirmation box, click Remove.
Downloading backups from the command line
You can also download any of your database backups using the command line. Using Acquia CLI, you can find the backup as follows:
acli api:environments:database-backup-list
You can download the backup as follows:
acli api:environments:database-backup-download
For more information, see Acquia CLI commands.
Code backups
Your code is maintained in a version control repository managed by Acquia. Each time you use the Cloud Platform user interface to click-and-drag code from an environment running either master or a branch, a new tag is created in the version control system. You can revert to an earlier tag at any time in any of your environments.
File backups
Your uploaded files are kept separate from your Drupal codebase and database,
using a symbolic link to your application’s /files directory. The Git
version control system can manage text files full of code, but is less well
suited for managing large collections of user-uploaded objects, such as images,
videos, or file attachments.
Cloud Platform makes internal disaster recovery snapshots of your files, but these are not available for subscribers for normal backup purposes. If you want to back up your uploaded files, you can either do so manually from the command line or create a cron task to make backups on a regular schedule.
For more information, see Working with files and Backing up your Drupal file system.
Custom full site backups
You can back up your whole application on an environment from the command line,
using Drush. The drush archive-dump command creates a complete archive file
of your application.
Important
Running this command on a large website (with large numbers of files, large databases, or volumes with a small files area) can lead to a full disk, which will cause the script to hang and will cause a website outage.
Note
The current Drupal version requires Drush version 11 or later. Newer versions of Drush, that is, version 11 and later, must be installed via Composer. Acquia does not manage the update to the newer versions. For more information, see About Drush on Cloud Platform.
The drush archive-dump command is incompatible with Drush 9 and later.
For example, to back up the Prod environment of an application named
example1:
drush @example1.prod archive-dump
By default, the backup file is saved to the drush-backups folder. Use the
--destination option to specify the full path and file name in which the
archive should be stored.
For more information, see About Drush on Cloud Platform and the Drush Commands reference.