RESTORE - CockroachDB

The RESTORE restores your cluster’s schemas and data from stored on services such as AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, or NFS. Because CockroachDB is designed with high fault tolerance, restores are designed primarily for disaster recovery, i.e., restarting your cluster if it loses a majority of its nodes. Isolated issues (such as small-scale node outages) do not require any intervention. You can restore:

A full cluster
Databases
Tables

For details on restoring across versions of CockroachDB, see . The BACKUP... TO and RESTORE... FROM {storage_uri} syntax has been removed from CockroachDB v24.3 and later. For details on the syntax to run BACKUP and RESTORE, refer to the and restore examples.

Considerations

RESTORE cannot restore backups made by newer versions of CockroachDB.
RESTORE only supports backups taken on a cluster on a specific major version into a cluster that is on the same version or the next major version. Refer to the page for more detail.
RESTORE is a blocking statement. To run a restore job asynchronously, use the DETACHED option.
RESTORE no longer requires an Enterprise license, regardless of the options passed to it or to the backup it is restoring.
You cannot restore a backup of a multi-region database into a single-region database.
When the parameter is set on a table, the table will not contain row data when restored.
During a , any present on the destination cluster are overwritten with the zone configurations from the . If no customized zone configurations were on the cluster when the backup was taken, then after the restore the destination cluster will use the zone configuration from the .

Required privileges

Starting in v22.2, CockroachDB introduces a new restore privilege model that provides finer control over a user’s privilege to restore backups.There is continued support for the legacy privilege model in v22.2, however it will be removed in a future release of CockroachDB. We recommend implementing the new privilege model that follows in this section for all restores. You can grant the RESTORE privilege to a user or role depending on the type of restore required:

Restore	Privilege
Cluster	Grant a user the system level `RESTORE` privilege. For example, `GRANT SYSTEM RESTORE TO user;`.
Database	Grant a user the system level `RESTORE` privilege to restore databases onto the cluster. For example, `GRANT SYSTEM RESTORE TO user;`.
Table	Grant a user the database level `RESTORE` privilege to restore schema objects into the database. For example, `GRANT RESTORE ON DATABASE nonadmin TO user;`.

The listed privileges do not cascade to objects lower in the schema tree. For example, if you are granted system-level restore privileges, this does not give you the privilege to restore a table. If you need the RESTORE privilege on a database to apply to all newly created tables in that database, use . You can add RESTORE to the user or role’s default privileges with . Members of the can run all three types of restore (cluster, database, and table) without the need to grant a specific RESTORE privilege. However, we recommend using the RESTORE privilege model to create users or roles and grant them RESTORE privileges as necessary for stronger access control.

Privileges for managing a restore job

To manage a restore job with , , or , users must have at least one of the following:

Be a member of the .
The .

To view a restore job with , users must have at least one of the following:

The , which allows you to view all jobs (including admin -owned jobs).
Be a member of the .
The .

See for detail on granting privileges to a role or user.

Required privileges using the legacy privilege model

The following details the existing privilege model that CockroachDB supports in v22.2 and earlier. Support for this privilege model will be removed in a future release of CockroachDB:

Full cluster restores can only be run by members of the . By default, the root user belongs to the admin role.
For all other restores, the user must have ( CREATE or INSERT ) on all objects affected.

See the Required privileges section for the updated privilege model.

Source privileges

You can grant a user the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS to interact with external resources that require implicit access. Either the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS or the role is required for the following scenarios:

To interact with a cloud storage resource using .
Use of a custom endpoint on S3.

No special privilege is required for:

Interacting with an Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage resource using SPECIFIED credentials. Azure Storage is always SPECIFIED by default.
Using storage.

We recommend using . You also need to ensure that the permissions at your storage destination are configured for the operation. See for a list of the necessary permissions that each bulk operation requires.

While Cockroach Labs actively tests Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Storage, we do not test (e.g., MinIO, Red Hat Ceph).

Synopsis

Parameters

Parameter	Description
`table\_pattern`	The table, , or you want to restore. For details on how restore works with objects that are dependent on one another, refer to Object dependencies.
`database\_name`	The name of the database you want to restore (i.e., restore all tables and views in the database). You can restore an entire database only if you had backed up the entire database.
`string\_or\_placeholder`	One of the following: `LATEST`: Restore the most recent backup in the given URI. Refer to the Restore from the most recent backup example. `your_backup_subdirectory`: Restore from a specific subdirectory in the given collection URI. Refer to the Restore a specific backup example.
`string\_or\_placeholder\_opt\_list`	One of the following: `your_backup_collection_URI`: The URI where the (and appended , if applicable) is stored. `your_locality_aware_backup_URI`: The URI where a is stored. When , include every locality ever used, even if it was only used once.
	`timestamp`	Restore data as it existed as of . You can restore point-in-time data if you had taken a full or incremental backup . If the backup was not taken with `revision\_history`, you can use to restore to a time that the backup covers (including in the full or incremental backup). Refer to the Restore with as of system time example.
`restore\_options\_list`	Control the backup job behavior with these options.

Options

You can control RESTORE behavior using any of the following in the restore_options_list. To set multiple RESTORE options, use a comma-separated list:

Option	Value	Description
	`DETACHED`	N/A	When `RESTORE` runs with `DETACHED`, the job will execute asynchronously. The job ID is returned after the restore job creation completes. Note that with `DETACHED` specified, further job information and the job completion status will not be returned. For more on the differences between the returned job data, see the below. To check on the job status, use the statement. To run a restore within a , use the `DETACHED` option.
`encryption\_passphrase`	Passphrase used to create the	The passphrase used to decrypt the file(s) that were encrypted by the statement.
	`EXECUTION LOCALITY`	Key-value pairs	Restricts the execution of the restore to nodes that match the defined requirements. Example: `WITH EXECUTION LOCALITY = 'region=us-west-1a,cloud=aws'`
`incremental\_location`		Restore an incremental backup from the alternate collection URI the backup was originally taken with. See Restore incremental backups for more detail.
`into\_db`	Database name	Use to change the destination database for table restores. The destination database must exist before a restore with `into\_db`. (Does not apply to database or cluster restores.) Example: `WITH into\_db = 'newdb'`
`kms`		The URI of the cryptographic key stored in a key management service (KMS), or a comma-separated list of key URIs, used to . Refer to on the Encrypted Backups page. The key or keys are used to encrypt the manifest and data files that the `BACKUP` statement generates, decrypt them during a operation, and list the contents of the backup when using . AWS KMS, Google Cloud KMS, and Azure Key Vault are supported.
`new\_db\_name`	Database name	Rename a database during a restore. The existing backed-up database can remain active while the same database is restored with a different name. Example: `RESTORE DATABASE movr ... WITH new\_db\_name = 'new\_movr'`
`schema\_only`	N/A	Verify that a backup is valid by running `RESTORE ... schema\_only`, which will restore the backed-up schema without any user data. Refer to for detail and an example.
`skip\_localities\_check`	N/A	Use to skip checking localities of a cluster before a restore when there are mismatched between the backup’s cluster and the destination cluster. For further details, refer to Restoring to multi-region databases. Example: `WITH skip\_localities\_check`
`skip\_missing\_foreign\_keys`	N/A	Use to remove the missing constraints before restoring. Example: `WITH skip\_missing\_foreign\_keys`
`skip\_missing\_sequences`	N/A	Use to ignore dependencies (i.e., the `DEFAULT` expression that uses the sequence). Example: `WITH skip\_missing\_sequences`
`skip\_missing\_sequence\_owners`	N/A	Must be used when restoring either a table that was previously a or a sequence that was previously owned by a table. Example: `WITH skip\_missing\_sequence\_owners`
`skip\_missing\_udfs`	N/A	Must be used when restoring a table with referenced dependencies. Any column’s `DEFAULT` expression using UDFs is dropped. Example: `WITH skip\_missing\_udfs`
`skip\_missing\_views`	N/A	Use to skip restoring that cannot be restored because their dependencies are not being restored at the same time. Example: `WITH skip\_missing\_views`
`verify\_backup\_table\_data`	N/A	Run a `schema\_only` restore and have the restore read all user data from external storage, verify checksums, and discard the user data before writing it to disk. You must also include the `schema\_only` option in the `RESTORE` statement with `verify\_backup\_table\_data`. For more detail, see .

Backup file URLs

CockroachDB uses the URL provided to construct a secure API call to the service you specify. The URL structure depends on the type of file storage you are using. For more information, see the following:

HTTP storage is not supported for BACKUP and RESTORE.

You can create an external connection to represent an external storage or sink URI. This allows you to specify the external connection’s name in statements rather than the provider-specific URI. For detail on using external connections, see the page.

Functional details

CockroachDB uses checksums to ensure data integrity during both the processes. When data is , CockroachDB calculates and stores checksums with the data. The checksums are then used to verify the integrity of the data when it is read back from disk. A restore job reads the data from the external backup storage and verifies the checksums to ensure that the data has not been corrupted during the storage or transfer of the backup. You can restore:

A full cluster
Databases
Tables

RESTORE will only restore the latest data in an object (table, database, cluster), or the latest data as per an AS OF SYSTEM TIME restore. That is, a restore will not include historical data even if you ran your backup with . This means that if you issue an AS OF SYSTEM TIME query on a restored object, the query will fail or the response will be incorrect because there is no historical data to query. For example, if you restore a table at 2022-07-13 10:38:00, it is not then possible to read or that table at 2022-07-13 10:37:00 or earlier. This is also the case for backups with revision_history that might try to initiate a revision start time earlier than 2022-07-13 10:38:00.

You can exclude a table’s row data from a backup using the parameter. With this parameter set, a table will be empty when restored.

Full cluster

A full cluster restore can only be run on a destination cluster with no user-created databases or tables. Restoring a full cluster includes:

All user tables
Relevant system tables
All
All (which automatically includes their )
All

Also, consider that:

will be restored to their original database during a full cluster restore.
The restore will drop the cluster’s defaultdb and postgres before the restore begins. You can only restore defaultdb and postgres if they are present in the original .
will not resume automatically on the new cluster. It is necessary to manually after a full-cluster restore.
When the cluster is in a mixed-version state during an , a full cluster restore will fail. To perform a full cluster restore, it is necessary to first .

When you restore a full cluster with an Enterprise license, it will restore the of the cluster you are restoring from. If you want to use a different license in the new cluster, make sure to after the restore is complete.

Databases

Restoring a database will create a new database and restore all of its tables and views. The created database will have the name of the database in the backup.

RESTORE DATABASE backup_database_name FROM LATEST in 'your_backup_collection_URI';

To restore a database that already exists in a cluster, use the new_db_name option with RESTORE to provide a new name for the database. See the Rename a database on restore example. If or an existing database is not an option, you can use table restore to restore all tables into the existing database by using the WITH into_db option.

Tables

You can also restore individual tables (which automatically includes their indexes), , or from a backup. This process uses the data stored in the backup to create entirely new tables, views, and sequences in the destination database. By default, tables, views, and sequences are restored into a destination database matching the name of the database from which they were backed up. If the destination database does not exist, you must . You can choose to change the destination database with the into_db option. The destination database must not have tables, views, or sequences with the same name as the the object you’re restoring. If any of the restore destination’s names are being used, you can:

, , or and then restore them. Note that a sequence cannot be dropped while it is being used in a column’s DEFAULT expression, so those expressions must be dropped before the sequence is dropped, and recreated after the sequence is recreated. The setval can be used to set the value of the sequence to what it was previously.
Restore the table, view, or sequence into a different database.

RESTORE only offers table-level granularity; it does not support restoring subsets of a table.

When restoring an individual table that references a user-defined type (e.g., ), CockroachDB will first check to see if the type already exists. The restore will attempt the following for each user-defined type within a table backup:

If there is not an existing type in the cluster with the same name, CockroachDB will create the user-defined type as it exists in the backup.
If there is an existing type in the cluster with the same name that is compatible with the type in the backup, CockroachDB will map the type in the backup to the type in the cluster.
If there is an existing type in the cluster with the same name but it is not compatible with the type in the backup, the restore will not succeed and you will be asked to resolve the naming conflict. You can do this by either or the existing user-defined type.

In general, two types are compatible if they are the same kind (e.g., an enum is only compatible with other enums). Additionally, enums are only compatible if they have the same ordered set of elements that have also been created in the same way. For example:

CREATE TYPE t1 AS ENUM ('yes', 'no') and CREATE TYPE t2 AS ENUM ('yes', 'no') are compatible.
CREATE TYPE t1 AS ENUM ('yes', 'no') and CREATE TYPE t2 AS ENUM ('no', 'yes') are not compatible.
CREATE TYPE t1 AS ENUM ('yes', 'no') and CREATE TYPE t2 AS ENUM ('yes'); ALTER TYPE t2 ADD VALUE ('no') are not compatible because they were not created in the same way.

Object dependencies

Dependent objects must be restored at the same time as the objects they depend on. When you back up a table, it will not include any dependent tables, , or . For example, if you back up v that depends on table t, it will only back up v, not t. When you try to restore v, the restore will fail because the referenced table is not present in the backup. Alternatively, you can pass a skip option with RESTORE to skip the dependency instead:

Dependent object	Depends on	Skip option
Table with constraints	The table it `REFERENCES`.
Table with a	The sequence.
	The tables used in the view’s `SELECT` statement.

We recommend treating tables with , which contribute to , or that use sequences or user-defined types as a single unit with their dependencies. While you can restore individual tables, you may find that backing up and restoring at the database level is more convenient.

Referenced UDFs are not restored and require the skip_missing_udfs option.

Users and privileges

The owner of restored objects will be the user running the restore job. To restore your users and privilege , you can do a cluster backup and restore the cluster to a fresh cluster with no user data. If you are not doing a full cluster restore, the table-level privileges need to be granted to the users after the restore is complete. (By default, the user restoring will become the owner of the restored objects.) To grant table-level privileges after a restore, backup the system.users table, , and then the table-level privileges.

Restore types

You can either restore from a full backup or from a full backup with incremental backups, based on the backup files you include:

Restore Type	Parameters
Full backup	Include the path to the full backup destination and the subdirectory of the backup. See the Examples section for syntax of cluster, database, and table restores.
Full backup + incremental backups	Include the path that contains the backup collection and the subdirectory containing the incremental backup. See Restore from incremental backups for an example.

CockroachDB does not support incremental-only restores.

Performance

The RESTORE process minimizes its impact to the cluster’s performance by distributing work to all nodes. Subsets of the restored data (known as ranges) are evenly distributed among randomly selected nodes, with each range initially restored to only one node. Once the range is restored, the node begins replicating it others.
When a RESTORE fails or is canceled, partially restored data is properly cleaned up. This can have a minor, temporary impact on cluster performance.
A restore job will pause if a node in the cluster runs out of disk space. See Viewing and controlling restore jobs for information on resuming and showing the progress of restore jobs. For instructions on how to free up disk space as quickly as possible after dropping a table, see
A restore job will instead of entering a failed state if it continues to encounter transient errors once it has retried a maximum number of times. Once the restore has paused, you can either or it.

Restoring to multi-region databases

Restoring to a is supported with some limitations. This section outlines details and settings that should be considered when restoring into multi-region databases:

A will be checked before a restore. Mismatched regions between backup and restore clusters will be flagged before the restore begins, which allows for a decision between updating the or restoring with the skip_localities_check option to continue with the restore regardless.

Restoring a multi-region cluster into a single-region CockroachDB Standard or CockroachDB Basic cluster is not supported. Standard and CockroachDB Basic clusters do not support the skip_localities_check option with RESTORE. To restore a multi-region cluster, you must with regions that match the backed-up multi-region cluster.

A database that is restored with the sql.defaults.primary_region will have the from this cluster setting assigned to the destination database.
RESTORE supports restoring non-multi-region tables into a multi-region database and sets the table locality as to the primary region of the destination database.
Restoring tables from multi-region databases with table localities set to , REGIONAL BY TABLE, , and to another multi-region database is supported.
When restoring a REGIONAL BY TABLE IN PRIMARY REGION table, if the primary region is different in the source database to the destination database this will be implicitly changed on restore.
Restoring a of a REGIONAL BY ROW table is not supported.
and tables can be restored only if the regions of the backed-up table match those of the destination database. All of the following must be true for RESTORE to be successful:
- The of the source database and the regions of the destination database have the same set of regions.
- The regions were added to each of the databases in the same order.
- The databases have the same . The following example would be considered as having mismatched regions because the database regions were not added in the same order and the primary regions do not match. Running on the source database:
  ALTER DATABASE source_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-east1";
  ALTER DATABASE source_database ADD region "us-west1";
  Running on the destination database:
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-west1";
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database ADD region "us-east1";
  In addition, the following scenario has mismatched regions between the databases since the regions were not added to the database in the same order. Running on the source database:
  ALTER DATABASE source_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-east1";
  ALTER DATABASE source_database ADD region "us-west1";
  Running on the destination database:
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-west1";
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database ADD region "us-east1";
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-east1";

The ordering of regions and how region matching is determined is a known limitation. For more on multi-region databases, see the .

Use instead of the sql.defaults.* . This allows you to set a default value for all users for any that applies during login, making the sql.defaults.* cluster settings redundant.

Viewing and controlling restore jobs

After CockroachDB successfully initiates a restore, it registers the restore as a job, which you can view with . After the restore has been initiated, you can control it with , , and .

If initiated correctly, the statement returns when the restore is finished or if it encounters an error. In some cases, the restore can continue after an error has been returned (the error message will tell you that the restore has resumed in background).

Examples

There are two ways to specify a full or incremental backup to restore:

Restoring from the most recent backup
Restoring from a specific backup

You can use external connections to represent an external storage or sink URI. This means that you can specify the external connection’s name in statements rather than the provider-specific URI:For detail on using external connections, refer to the page.

Some of the examples in this section use an to represent the external storage URI. For guidance on connecting to cloud storage or using other authentication parameters, read . If you need to limit the control specific users have over your storage buckets, refer to for setup instructions.

View the backup subdirectories

BACKUP... INTO adds a backup to a location. To view the backup paths in a given collection location, use :

SHOW BACKUPS IN 's3://bucket/path?AUTH=implicit';

       path
-------------------------
/2023/12/14-190909.83
/2023/12/20-155249.37
/2023/12/21-142943.73
(3 rows)

When you want to restore a specific backup, add the backup’s subdirectory path (e.g., /2023/12/21-142943.73) to the RESTORE statement. For details on viewing the most recent backup, see .

Restore the most recent full or incremental backup

To restore from the most recent backup () in the collection’s location, use the LATEST syntax:

RESTORE FROM LATEST IN 's3://bucket/path?AUTH=implicit';

If you are restoring an incremental backup, the storage location must contain a full backup. When you restore from an incremental backup, you’re restoring the entire table, database, or cluster. CockroachDB uses both the latest (or a ) incremental backup and the full backup during this process. You cannot restore an incremental backup without a full backup. Furthermore, it is not possible to restore over a , , or with existing data. Refer to for detail on the types of backups you can restore.

RESTORE will re-validate when are created from an older version (v20.2.2 and earlier or v20.1.4 and earlier), but restored by a newer version (v21.1.0+). These earlier releases may have included incomplete data for indexes that were in the process of being created.

Restore a specific full or incremental backup

To restore a specific full or incremental backup, specify that backup’s subdirectory in the RESTORE statement. To view the available subdirectories, use SHOW BACKUPS. If you are restoring an incremental backup, the URI must point to the storage location that contains the full backup:

RESTORE FROM '2023/03/23-213101.37' IN 's3://bucket/path?AUTH=implicit';

Restore a cluster

To restore a full cluster:

RESTORE FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3';

To view the available subdirectories, use SHOW BACKUPS.

Restore a database

To restore a database:

RESTORE DATABASE bank FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3';

To view the available subdirectories, use SHOW BACKUPS.

RESTORE DATABASE can only be used if the entire database was backed up.

Restore a table

To restore a single table:

RESTORE TABLE bank.customers FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3';

To restore multiple tables:

RESTORE TABLE bank.customers, bank.accounts FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3';

To view the available subdirectories, use SHOW BACKUPS.

Restore with `AS OF SYSTEM TIME`

RESTORE will only restore the latest data as per an AS OF SYSTEM TIME restore. The restore will not include historical data even if you ran your backup with revision_history.

Running a backup with captures every change made within the garbage collection period leading up to and including the given timestamp, which allows you to restore to an arbitrary point-in-time within the revision history. If you ran a backup without revision_history, it is still possible to use AS OF SYSTEM TIME with RESTORE to target a particular time for the restore. However, your restore will be limited to the times of the full backup and each incremental backup in the chain. In this case, use the following example to restore to a particular time. First, find the times that are available for a point-in-time-restore by listing the available backup directories in your storage location:

SHOW BACKUPS IN 'external://backup_s3';

          path
------------------------
  2023/01/18-141753.98
  2023/01/23-184816.10
  2023/01/23-185448.11
(3 rows)

From the output use the required date directory and run the following to get the details of the backup:

SHOW BACKUP '2023/01/23-185448.11' IN 'external://backup_s3';

  database_name | parent_schema_name |        object_name         | object_type | backup_type |         start_time         |          end_time          | size_bytes | rows | is_full_cluster
----------------+--------------------+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------------+----------------------------+------------+------+------------------
  movr          | public             | vehicle_location_histories | table       | full        | NULL                       | 2023-01-23 18:54:48.116975 |      85430 | 1092 |        t
  movr          | public             | promo_codes                | table       | full        | NULL                       | 2023-01-23 18:54:48.116975 |     225775 | 1003 |        t
  movr          | public             | user_promo_codes           | table       | full        | NULL                       | 2023-01-23 18:54:48.116975 |       1009 |   11 |        t
  NULL          | NULL               | system                     | database    | incremental | 2023-01-23 18:54:48.116975 | 2023-01-24 00:00:00        |       NULL | NULL |        t
  system        | public             | users                      | table       | incremental | 2023-01-23 18:54:48.116975 | 2023-01-24 00:00:00        |          0 |    0 |        t
  system        | public             | zones                      | table       | incremental | 2023-01-23 18:54:48.116975 | 2023-01-24 00:00:00        |          0 |    0 |

Finally, use the start_time and end_time detail to define the required time as part of the AS OF SYSTEM TIME clause. Run the restore, passing the directory and the timestamp:

RESTORE DATABASE movr FROM '2023/01/23-185448.11' IN 'external://backup_s3' AS OF SYSTEM TIME '2023-01-23 18:56:48';

Restore a backup asynchronously

Use the DETACHED option to execute the restore asynchronously:

> RESTORE FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3'
WITH DETACHED;

The job ID is returned after the restore job creation completes:

        job_id
----------------------
  592786066399264769
(1 row)

Without the DETACHED option, RESTORE will block the SQL connection until the job completes. Once finished, the job status and more detailed job data is returned:

job_id             |  status   | fraction_completed | rows | index_entries | bytes
---------------------+-----------+--------------------+------+---------------+--------
652471804772712449 | succeeded |                  1 |   50 |             0 |  4911
(1 row)

Other restore usages

Restore tables into a different database

By default, tables and views are restored to the database they originally belonged to. However, using the into_db option, you can control the destination database. Note that the destination database must exist prior to the restore.

Create the new database that you’ll restore the table or view into:
> CREATE DATABASE newdb;

Restore the table into the newly created database with into_db:

> RESTORE bank.customers FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3'
WITH into_db = 'newdb';

Rename a database on restore

To rename a database on restore, use the new_db_name option:

RESTORE DATABASE bank FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3'
WITH new_db_name = 'new_bank';

When you run RESTORE with new_db_name, the existing database that was originally backed up can remain active:

database_name
--------------+
defaultdb
bank
new_bank
postgres
system

Remove the foreign key before restore

By default, tables with constraints must be restored at the same time as the tables they reference. However, using the option you can remove the foreign key constraint from the table and then restore it.

> RESTORE bank.accounts FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3'
WITH skip_missing_foreign_keys;

Restoring users from `system.users` backup

The system.users table stores your cluster’s usernames and their hashed passwords. To restore them, you must restore the system.users table into a new database because you cannot drop the existing system.users table. After it’s restored into a new database, you can write the restored users table data to the cluster’s existing system.users table.

Create the new database that you’ll restore the system.users table into:
> CREATE DATABASE newdb;

Restore the system.users table into the new database:

> RESTORE system.users  FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3'
WITH into_db = 'newdb';

After the restore completes, add the users to the existing system.users table:
> INSERT INTO system.users SELECT * FROM newdb.users;
Remove the temporary users table:
> DROP TABLE newdb.users;

Restore from incremental backups in a different location

Removed in v26.2: The incremental_location option has been removed in v26.2, following its prior . Existing backups taken with this option cannot be restored in v26.2 or later. If you have backups that use incremental_location, you can only restore them using a cluster running v26.1 or earlier.

To restore an incremental backup that was taken using the , you must run the RESTORE statement with both:

the collection URI of the full backup
the incremental_location option referencing the incremental backup’s collection URI, as passed in the original BACKUP statement

RESTORE TABLE movr.users FROM LATEST IN 'external://backup_s3' WITH incremental_location = '{incremental_backup_URI}';

For more detail on using this option with BACKUP, see .

Known limitations

RESTORE will not restore a table that references a , unless you skip restoring the function with the skip_missing_udfs option. Alternatively, take a to include everything needed to restore the table.
Restoring and tables into a non-multi-region database is not supported.
and tables can be restored only if the regions of the backed-up table match those of the destination database. All of the following must be true for RESTORE to be successful:
- The of the source database and the regions of the destination database have the same set of regions.
- The regions were added to each of the databases in the same order.
- The databases have the same . The following example would be considered as having mismatched regions because the database regions were not added in the same order and the primary regions do not match. Running on the source database:
  ALTER DATABASE source_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-east1";
  ALTER DATABASE source_database ADD region "us-west1";
  Running on the destination database:
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-west1";
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database ADD region "us-east1";
  In addition, the following scenario has mismatched regions between the databases since the regions were not added to the database in the same order. Running on the source database:
  ALTER DATABASE source_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-east1";
  ALTER DATABASE source_database ADD region "us-west1";
  Running on the destination database:
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-west1";
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database ADD region "us-east1";
  ALTER DATABASE destination_database SET PRIMARY REGION "us-east1";

​Considerations

​Required privileges

​Privileges for managing a restore job

​Required privileges using the legacy privilege model

​Source privileges

​Synopsis

​Parameters

​Options

​Backup file URLs

​Functional details

​Full cluster

​Databases

​Tables

​Object dependencies

​Users and privileges

​Restore types

​Performance

​Restoring to multi-region databases

​Viewing and controlling restore jobs

​Examples

​View the backup subdirectories

​Restore the most recent full or incremental backup

​Restore a specific full or incremental backup

​Restore a cluster

​Restore a database

​Restore a table

​Restore with AS OF SYSTEM TIME

​Restore a backup asynchronously

​Other restore usages

​Restore tables into a different database

​Rename a database on restore

​Remove the foreign key before restore

​Restoring users from system.users backup

​Restore from incremental backups in a different location

​Known limitations

​See also

Considerations

Required privileges

Privileges for managing a restore job

Required privileges using the legacy privilege model

Source privileges

Synopsis

Parameters

Options

Backup file URLs

Functional details

Full cluster

Databases

Tables

Object dependencies

Users and privileges

Restore types

Performance

Restoring to multi-region databases

Viewing and controlling restore jobs

Examples

View the backup subdirectories

Restore the most recent full or incremental backup

Restore a specific full or incremental backup

Restore a cluster

Restore a database

Restore a table

Restore with `AS OF SYSTEM TIME`

Restore a backup asynchronously

Other restore usages

Restore tables into a different database

Rename a database on restore

Remove the foreign key before restore

Restoring users from `system.users` backup

Restore from incremental backups in a different location

Known limitations

See also