- SAP Managed Tags:
One of the benefits of using a fully managed, cloud native database over a self managed on premise database is simplifying administration tasks such as backup and recovery. As the cloud native version of SAP IQ, SAP HANA Cloud, data lake relational engine ("HDLRE") has always provided fully automated backups with a 3 hour recovery point objective and since those backups are stored in SAP HANA Cloud, data lake files the storage is resilient across multiple availability zones.
Of course, creating the database backups is only half of the work and historically restoring an HDLRE instance has required opening a service ticket and working with the HANA Cloud operations team to execute the database restore. With the 2024-QRC4 release, database administrators can now execute a self service restore of their HDLRE databases with just a few clicks.
Starting from HANA Cloud Central, open the Actions ("...") pop up menu for your instance and choose "Start Recovery"
This will open the Start Recovery dialogue provides access to all of the available backups and provides a date-time selector to narrow the list.
When you open the Start Recovery dialogue it lists all of the backups made in the last 24 hours. To list the older backups you need to set the date-time range and choose "Go" to update the list of backups. By default HDLRE retains backups for 14 days. The retention period is configurable in a range from 1 day up to 7 months (and you can choose to disable backups entirely).
As an example, if I want to restore my HDLRE instance to a backup from 10 days ago (relative to Feb. 7, 2025 when I'm writing this blog), then I would set the date-time range back to Jan. 28th and click "Go" to show the backups available for that date.
Spoiler
Note that the date time range that you enter is based on the local time zone of your browser where you have HANA Cloud Central loaded. The Backup Timestamp value that is returned is for the UTC time zone. In my case, I am located in the UTC -05:00 time zone. This means that when I ask for a list of backups available from Jan. 28, 2025 12:00:00 AM to Jan. 28, 2025 11:59:59 PM (UTC -05:00) that equates to a date-time range of Jan. 28, 2025 05:00 AM to Jan. 29, 2025 04:59:59 AM (UTC).
Once the list of backups is updated, you select the specific backup that you want to restore and click the "Start Recovery" button at the bottom right of the dialogue.
While the recovery is in progress, the instance status will first show as "Refreshing"
and then show a status of "Starting - Converting" as the backup is applied.
Once the restore has completed the status will show "Running"
