Top FAQs to Back Up and Restore User Content (Snapshots)

What do I need to back up?

Oracle recommends that you regularly back up all the content that users create to a file called a snapshot. User content includes catalog content such as reports, dashboards, data visualization workbooks, pixel perfect reports, datasets, data flows, semantic models, security roles, service settings, and so on.

If something goes wrong with your content or service, you can revert to the content you saved in a snapshot. Snapshots are also useful if you want to move or share content from one service to another.

To back up user content, see Take a Snapshot.

To restore user content, see Restore from a Snapshot.

How often should I take snapshots?

Oracle recommends that you take snapshots at significant checkpoints, for example, before you make a major change to your content or environment. In addition, Oracle recommends that you take regular weekly snapshots or at your own defined frequency based on the rate of change of your environment and rollback requirements.

You can keep up to 40 snapshots online and export as many as you want offline (that is, to your local file system or to your own Oracle Cloud storage).

When should I export snapshots?

Oracle recommends that you adopt a regular practice of exporting snapshots to offline storage. You can export snapshots to your own file system and store them locally. Or, you can export snapshots to your own Oracle Cloud storage. See Export Snapshots.

If you regularly export large snapshots (over 5GB or larger than the download limit of your browser), Oracle recommends that you set up a storage bucket on Oracle Cloud and save your snapshots to cloud storage. This way, you can avoid export errors due to size limitations and timeouts that can sometimes occur when you export snapshots on your local file system. See Set Up a Oracle Cloud Storage Bucket for Snapshots.

Can I use APIs to automate snapshot operations?

Yes. See Manage Snapshots Using REST APIs.

Can Oracle help to restore lost content?

No. Customer data backup, retention, and recovery or restoration is the sole responsibility of the customer using snapshots (BAR files), catalog archives (CATALOG files), and export archives (DVA files). Oracle-managed infrastructure backups are created to maintain the service in the event of an infrastructure incident. Oracle-maintained backups aren’t provided for user-created data management. See Oracle PaaS and IaaS Public Cloud Services - Pillar document.

Oracle recommends that you use the Logging service in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to track and troubleshoot content changes between snapshots. When you enable usage and diagnostic logs, you can monitor create, update, delete, and permission change operations on all catalog objects, such as classic analyses, dashboards, workbooks, pixel-perfect reports, folders, datasets, self-service connections, data flows, sequences, scripts, and so on. See Monitor Usage and Diagnostic Logs.