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Percona Backup for MongoDB 2.16.0 (2026-09-24)

Installation

Percona Backup for MongoDB (PBM) is a distributed, low-impact solution for creating consistent backups of MongoDB sharded clusters and replica sets, and restoring them to a specific point in time.

PBM 2.16.0 introduces lifecycle policies for managing backup retention and experimental parallel uploads to Google Cloud Storage (GCS). Moreover, it extends platform support to Debian 13 (x64 and ARM64) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, and compatibility to MongoDB Community and Percona Server for MongoDB 8.3.

Release highlights

Backup lifecycle management

PBM now supports backup retention policies based on the grandfather-father-son (GFS) model . Configure retention periods in the lifecycle section, then apply the policy with pbm cleanup --lifecycle.

The policy combines three retention periods:

Option Retention behavior
dailyRetention Keeps all eligible backups within the specified number of days.
weeklyRetention Selects one backup per backup type from each weekly interval within the retention period.
monthlyRetention Selects one backup per backup type from each monthly interval within the retention period.

Weekly and monthly retention support two strategies:

  • The rolling strategy uses intervals of seven days and 30 days, measured backward from the cleanup evaluation time.

  • The calendar strategy uses calendar weeks and months. PBM selects the backup closest to the configured weekday or day of the month within each interval.

PBM selects weekly and monthly backups separately for logical, physical, incremental, and external backup types. Selective logical backups are excluded from lifecycle cleanup.

The policy includes these safeguards:

  • The minKeep option aborts cleanup if fewer than the specified number of successful restore points would remain. The default is 1.

  • The purgeFailed option controls deletion of failed and canceled backups. The default is false.

  • PBM preserves an entire incremental backup chain when any member must remain.

  • PBM protects base backups required for active point-in-time recovery (PITR). Lifecycle cleanup leaves PITR oplog slices in place.

Preview the cleanup policy

Configure the retention periods and set lifecycle.enabled to true. Run pbm cleanup --lifecycle --dry-run to review the proposed changes without deleting backups.

The policy takes effect when you run pbm cleanup --lifecycle. Use an external scheduler for recurring cleanup.

For a deep dive into this feature, see the documentation.

Parallel uploads to Google Cloud Storage

Experimental feature

  • Parallel uploads rely on an experimental feature of the Google Cloud Storage Go client. The upstream project does not recommend this feature for production use, and its API can change in future releases.

  • For upstream limitations, see Parallel uploads in the Google Cloud Storage Go client .

PBM can upload parts of a backup to GCS concurrently and compose them into the final backup object. Parallel uploads may improve throughput for large objects, depending on the available bandwidth and host resources.

Enable parallel uploads with the following GCS settings:

  • Set storage.gcs.clientType to grpc.

  • Set storage.gcs.parallelUploadConcurrency to a value greater than 1.

The parallelUploadConcurrency value must be greater than 1. Test the configuration with your workload because the additional overhead may not benefit smaller objects.

For more insights into this feature, see the documentation.

Extended platform support

PBM 2.16.0 adds support for these platforms:

  • Debian 13 (Trixie) on AMD64 and ARM64.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.

Red Hat packages use systemd to manage pbm-agent. The packages no longer include SysV init scripts.

Upgrade considerations

S3 debug logging

PBM now validates storage.s3.debugLogLevels for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and S3-compatible storage. If the configuration contains an unsupported value, PBM cannot initialize the storage and reports an error.

Before upgrading, verify that this option contains only the following supported values:

Signing, Retries, Request, RequestWithBody, Response, ResponseWithBody, and DeprecatedUsage.

For detailed information about these options, refer to the documentation.

Service management on Red Hat platforms

Red Hat packages no longer include SysV init scripts. If your automation uses these scripts to manage pbm-agent, update it to use systemd before upgrading.

Deprecated HMAC client for GCS

Removed the HMAC-based client for Google Cloud Storage. PBM no longer recognizes HMAC configuration options for GCS. Before upgrading to PBM 2.16.0, reconfigure GCS storage to use the native JSON client and service account credentials.

Changelog

New features

  • PBM-1699: Added backup start time, finish time, and duration to agent logs and pbm describe-backup output. The pbm list and pbm status outputs also show the backup duration.

  • PBM-1731: Added GFS backup retention policies and the pbm cleanup --lifecycle command to apply them.

  • PBM-1736: Added Debian 13 (Trixie) AMD64 support for PBM.

  • PBM-1786: Added Debian 13 (Trixie) ARM64 support for PBM.

  • PBM-1770: Added support for logical restores with namespace remapping on Percona Server for MongoDB 8.3.

  • PBM-1771: Added support for logical restores of time-series collections on Percona Server for MongoDB 8.3.

  • PBM-1772: Added support for oplog replay during logical point-in-time restores on Percona Server for MongoDB 8.3.

  • PBM-1806: Added packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. Red Hat packages use systemd and no longer include SysV init scripts.

Improvements

  • PBM-1776: Added experimental parallel uploads through the native GCS client’s grpc client type.

  • PBM-1804: Updated version checks to recognize MongoDB and Percona Server for MongoDB 8.3. PBM no longer reports an unsupported minor version warning for these releases.

  • PBM-1780: Removed the HMAC-based client for Google Cloud Storage. PBM no longer recognizes HMAC configuration options for GCS.

Fixed bugs

  • PBM-1675: Corrected backup compatibility checks for sharded clusters. PBM also rejects connections through mongos with a clear error.

  • PBM-1689: Fixed an issue that left restores waiting indefinitely after backup chunk downloads failed. PBM reports the download error and stops the restore.

  • PBM-1700: Limited concurrent collStats queries during logical backup preparation to reduce the load on MongoDB.

  • PBM-1712: Fixed an issue that could prevent pbm-agent from completing cleanup after a physical restore.

  • PBM-1720: Added validation for storage.s3.debugLogLevels. PBM reports an error when an unsupported value prevents storage initialization.

  • PBM-1734: Fixed an issue that mixed S3 debug messages with pbm status and pbm describe-backup output.

  • PBM-1766: Fixed an error that prevented pbm describe-backup from displaying information about a failed logical backup.

  • PBM-1799: Fixed logical restores from GCS when backup files were split and storage.gcs.prefix was configured.

Last update: September 23, 2026
Created: September 21, 2026