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Create a volume backup

Volume backups are a deeper recovery mechanism than snapshots — they're a full copy of the volume that can be restored independently and stored on a separate backend.

The Portal doesn't surface a volume-backup UI today; create and manage backups from the OpenStack CLI.

Backup vs snapshot

Snapshot Backup
Cheap, fast, near-instant. Slower, copies all blocks.
Lives on the same storage backend as the volume. Can target a separate backup backend.
Lost if the source backend fails catastrophically. Survives source-backend loss.
Pointed in time, restored via "create volume from snapshot". Full restore, replaces or branches a volume.
Managed from the Portal. Managed via the CLI.

A typical pattern: take frequent snapshots for fast rollback, take less-frequent backups for disaster recovery.

Prerequisites

  • An existing volume in any state.
  • The OpenStack CLI installed and pointed at a clouds.yaml with an application credential for the project that owns the volume.
  • Operator-side volume-backup configuration. If your deployment hasn't been configured with a backup backend, openstack volume backup create will return an error — contact support to confirm backup is available before you build automation around it.

Steps

1. Look up the volume ID

openstack --os-cloud breqwatr volume list

Note the ID column for the volume you want to back up.

2. Create the backup

openstack --os-cloud breqwatr volume backup create <volume-id>

For volumes that are currently attached (in-use), add --force:

openstack --os-cloud breqwatr volume backup create <volume-id> --force

The command returns the backup's ID and name:

+-------+--------------------------------------+
| Field | Value                                |
+-------+--------------------------------------+
| id    | 2ac93a23-667d-4b4f-a7ba-d1778c3c21d0 |
| name  | None                                 |
+-------+--------------------------------------+

Add --name <label> and --description <text> to make backups easier to identify later:

openstack --os-cloud breqwatr volume backup create <volume-id> \
  --name pg-data-2026-04-19 \
  --description "Before Postgres 16 upgrade" \
  --force

3. Check status and list

openstack --os-cloud breqwatr volume backup list
openstack --os-cloud breqwatr volume backup show <backup-id>

Backups move through creating → available. Backup creation can take minutes for large volumes — the duration scales with volume size, not with how much data is on it.

4. Restore a backup

Restore creates a new volume (you can also restore over an existing volume, but creating a new one is safer):

openstack --os-cloud breqwatr volume backup restore <backup-id> <new-volume-name>

Then attach the restored volume to an instance and verify the data.

5. Delete an old backup

openstack --os-cloud breqwatr volume backup delete <backup-id>

Deleting is irreversible — verify you don't need the backup before running this.

Verification

  • openstack volume backup show <backup-id> returns the backup in available state.
  • Restoring the backup into a new volume produces data that matches the source (compare a directory listing or file checksum).

Next steps