Lesson 4 of 5
Backup and recovery
10 min
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Persistence protects against a crash. Backups protect against losing the disks, corrupting data or making a mistake you need to undo. In a RISE with SAP private cloud like Contoso's, SAP runs the backups as part of the service; the contract defines schedules and retention. Contoso's Basis team still needs to understand the options, because they decide what to ask for when a refresh, a restore or a cutover fallback is planned.
Backup types
| Type | What it contains | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Complete data backup | All data needed to recover the database to a consistent state (unused space is not included) | Weekly or daily baseline |
| Differential data backup | Data changed since the last complete data backup | Daily, to shorten backup time |
| Incremental data backup | Data changed since the last data backup of any kind | Daily, smallest backups but more steps at restore |
| Log backup | The content of a closed log segment, written automatically | Continuous; enables point-in-time recovery |
| Data snapshot | A storage-level image of the data volume prepared by the database | Fast backup and copies on supported storage (check your platform) |
SAP HANA backup types. Each tenant and the system database have their own backup catalog.
A data backup first triggers a savepoint across all services, then writes the data volume content, then writes a topology file. Log backups run on their own: whenever a log segment closes, SAP HANA copies it to the log backup destination set by basepath_logbackup (or a backup tool connected through an interface). Every backup is recorded in the backup catalog, which the recovery wizard reads to work out which files it needs.
- Sunday 01:00Complete data backupBaseline for the week
- Monday to Saturday 01:00Incremental or differential backupsCapture daily change at lower cost
- All day, every dayLog backupsEach closed log segment copied automatically
- Retention: 4 weeksFour backup generationsOlder media reused once a newer generation is complete
Recovery options
SAP HANA can recover a database to three kinds of target: the most recent state (all committed transactions up to the failure), a point in time, or a specific data backup. To reach the most recent state after losing the data volume, you restore the last complete data backup, apply delta backups, replay the log backups written since, and finally replay what is still in the log area. Recovery requires the database to be stopped, and it works on a whole tenant (or the system database), never on single tables.
- Are the data and log volumes intact after the failure?Yes → a normal restart replays the redo log; no restore needed · No → next question
- Is the goal to undo a logical error, such as a mass update run by mistake at 14:20?Yes → recover the tenant to a point in time just before 14:20 (everything after is lost, so agree it with the business) · No → next question
- Are all log backups since the last data backup available?Yes → recover to the most recent state · No → recover to the last data backup and accept the gap
Backups are also a copy tool
Backup and recovery is one way to copy a database: restore a production backup into another system's tenant. That is how many system refreshes start, which is why the backup of CMP matters to testers using CMQ. Two limits are worth knowing: you cannot restore a backup from a newer SAP HANA release into an older one, and you cannot restore into the system database. The course on system copies and refreshes (sap-bas-204) covers what has to happen after such a restore.
What would you do?
During Contoso's second mock conversion, a faulty data-correction program runs at 14:20 in CMQ and damages 30,000 sales order items. Priya's team has entered other test data in CMQ since then. What should Sam propose?
- Backup types: complete, differential, incremental data backups; automatic log backups; data snapshots where supported.
- Each tenant and the system database has its own backup catalog.
- Recover to the most recent state, a point in time or a specific data backup; always a whole tenant.
- Backups also copy databases for refreshes; prove backups with timed restores before go-live.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. What does an incremental data backup contain?
2. What is the smallest unit SAP HANA can recover?
3. What is needed to recover to the most recent state after losing the data volume?
4. Which restore is not supported?