In-place restore with point-in-time recovery¶

Restore an existing cluster to a specific moment using a base backup and archived WAL. This operation uses the PerconaPGRestore custom resource.

Important

This operation overwrites the current data and is destructive.

For how point-in-time recovery works and how to use the latest restorable time, see Point-in-time recovery. For a full restore to the same cluster (without a target time), see Restore to an existing PostgreSQL cluster.

If you restore from a PVC snapshot and then replay WAL, follow In-place restore with point-in-time recovery from a PVC snapshot instead.

Prepare your environment¶

Export the namespace where your cluster is running as an environment variable. Replace the <namespace> placeholder with your value:

export NAMESPACE=<namespace>

Restore to a point in time¶

To make a point-in-time restore, you need the following:

A backup that finished before your target time. You cannot restore to the time where there was no backup
All relevant WAL files must be successfully archived
The --type=time and --target options in the options subsection of the deploy/restore.yaml configuration file

Here’s the sequence of steps to follow:

List available backups:
```
kubectl get pg-backup -n $NAMESPACE
```
Determine the target restore time. Use the latest restorable time from your backup, or another timestamp that falls after a completed backup and within archived WAL:
```
kubectl get pg-backup <backup_name> -n $NAMESPACE \
  -o jsonpath='{.status.latestRestorableTime}'
```
Edit the deploy/restore.yaml configuration file and specify this information:
- pgCluster - the name of your cluster
- repoName - the name of the pgBackRest repository, where the backup is located. The repo with the same name must already be configured in the backups.pgbackrest.repos subsection of the cluster Custom Resource
- Configure the options section:
  - --type - set to time.
  - --target - set the target time that you retrieved at the previous step. The format is <YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:DD>, optionally followed by a timezone offset: “2021-04-16 15:13:32+00” (+00 here means UTC).
Here’s the example configuration:
```
apiVersion: pgv2.percona.com/v2
kind: PerconaPGRestore
metadata:
  name: restore1
spec:
  pgCluster: cluster1
  repoName: repo1
  options:
  - --type=time
  - --target="2025-11-30 15:12:11+03"
```

Start the restore process:

kubectl apply -f deploy/restore.yaml -n $NAMESPACE

Specify a base backup for point-in-time restore¶

By default, the Operator uses the latest successful full backup as the base. You can select another base backup by its ID and pass it with the --set option in the restore configuration file.

To get the backup ID, do the following:

Get the Pod name:
```
kubectl get pods -n $NAMESPACE
```

Connect to the Pod and get the backup ID with the pgbackrest --stanza=db info command:

kubectl -n $NAMESPACE exec -it cluster1-instance1-hcgr-0 -c database -- pgbackrest --stanza=db info

Find ID of the needed backup in the output:

stanza: db
    status: ok
    cipher: none

    db (prior)
        wal archive min/max (16): 0000000F000000000000001C/0000002000000036000000C5

        full backup: 20240401-173403F
            timestamp start/stop: 2024-04-01 17:34:03+00 / 2024-04-01 17:36:57+00
            wal start/stop: 000000120000000000000022 / 000000120000000000000024
            database size: 31MB, database backup size: 31MB
            repo1: backup set size: 4.1MB, backup size: 4.1MB

        incr backup: 20240401-173403F_20240415-201250I
            timestamp start/stop: 2024-04-15 20:12:50+00 / 2024-04-15 20:14:19+00
            wal start/stop: 00000019000000000000005C / 00000019000000000000005D
            database size: 46.0MB, database backup size: 25.7MB
            repo1: backup set size: 6.1MB, backup size: 3.8MB
            backup reference list: 20240401-173403F

        incr backup: 20240401-173403F_20240415-201430I
...

Reference this backup ID in the backup restore configuration file:

apiVersion: pgv2.percona.com/v2
kind: PerconaPGRestore
metadata:
  name: restore1
spec:
  pgCluster: cluster1
  repoName: repo1
  options:
  - --type=time
  - --target="2024-04-01 17:36:57+00"
  - --set="20240401-173403F"

Start the restore:

kubectl apply -f deploy/restore.yaml -n $NAMESPACE

Last update: September 9, 2026
Created: September 9, 2026

In-place restore with point-in-time recovery¶

Prepare your environment¶

Restore to a point in time¶

Specify a base backup for point-in-time restore¶

Related topics¶