Backup and restore types

You can use several types of database backups and restores to develop your backup strategy.

Not sure what exactly backup you need? The following diagram helps you decide:

The following table provides an overview of each type:

Type	Version added	When to use	Supported deployments	Percona Server for MongoDB	MongoDB Community / Enterprise Edition
Logical GA	1.0.0	- Selective restore of a specific database or a collection in a cluster (starting with version 2.0.0) - Resilient to major / minor version changes in MongoDB and can be used for migration	Sharded clusters and non-sharded replica sets	Yes	Yes
Physical GA	2.0.0	- Full restore of a very large (e.g. Terabytes of data) dataset to a specific point in time with guaranteed data consistency - Faster restores compared to logical ones	Sharded clusters and non-sharded replica sets	Yes (starting with 4.2.15-16, 4.4.6-8 and higher, 5.0.x, 6.0.x and higher)	No
Selective GA	2.5.0	Restore of the desired subset of data without disrupting the operations of your whole cluster	Sharded clusters starting with version 2.0.3. Sharded collections starting with version 2.1.0.	Yes	Yes
Incremental GA	2.1.0 (For PSMDB versions 4.2.24-24, 4.4.18-18, 5.0.2-1, 6.0.2-1 and higher)	Save on disk space for large backups where the data needs to be frequently backed up	Sharded clusters and non-sharded replica sets	Yes	No
Point-in-time recovery GA	1.3.0 (logical) 2.0.0 (physical manually) 2.2.0 (physical automated)	Full restore of a database to a specific point in time with guaranteed data consistency	Sharded clusters and non-sharded replica sets	Yes	Yes* (logical only)
Snapshot-based GA	2.6.0	Restore of a very large data set (e.g. Terabytes of data) with almost immediate access to data. A drawback is the process is not fully automated	Sharded clusters and non-sharded replica sets	Yes	No

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Last update: July 11, 2025
Created: July 11, 2025