IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates
will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the
current release documentation.
As with any software that stores data, it is important to routinely back up your data. Elasticsearch’s replica shards provide high availability during runtime; they enable you to tolerate sporadic node loss without an interruption of service.
However, replica shards do not protect an Elasticsearch cluster from catastrophic failure. You need a backup of your cluster— a copy in case something goes wrong.
Elasticsearch offers two features to support high availability for a cluster:
- Snapshot and restore, which you can use to back up individual indices or entire clusters. You can automatically store these backups in a repository on a shared filesystem.
- Cross-cluster replication (CCR), which you can use to copy indices in remote clusters to a local cluster. You can use cross-cluster replication to recover from the failure of a primary cluster or serve data locally based on geo-proximity.