Enable point-in-time recovery in DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB point-in-time recovery (PITR) provides automatic backups of your DynamoDB table data. This section provides an overview of how the process works in DynamoDB.

Enabling point-in-time recovery

You can enable point-in-time recovery using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or the DynamoDB API. When enabled, point-in-time recovery provides continuous backups until you explicitly turn it off.

After you enable point-in-time recovery, you can restore to any point in time within EarliestRestorableDateTime and LatestRestorableDateTime. LatestRestorableDateTime is typically five minutes before the current time. For more information, see Restoring a DynamoDB table to a point in time.

Enable PITR (console)

Enable PITR (AWS CLI)

Run the update-continuous-backups command with the point-in-time-recovery-specification setting turned on:

aws dynamodb update-continuous-backups \
--region us-east-1 \
--table-name <ddb-table-name> \
--point-in-time-recovery-specification PointInTimeRecoveryEnabled=true

Enable PITR (AWS CloudFormation)

Use the AWS::DynamoDB::Table resource with the PointInTimeRecoverySpecification property turned on:

Resources:
  iotCatalog:
    Type: AWS::DynamoDB::Table
      Properties:
      ...
      PointInTimeRecoverySpecification:
        PointInTimeRecoveryEnabled: true

Request syntax example:

{
   "PointInTimeRecoverySpecification": { 
      "PointInTimeRecoveryEnabled": boolean
   },
   "TableName": "string"
}

Enable PITR (API)

Run the UpdateContinuousBackups API operation with the PointInTimeRecoverySpecification parameter turned on.

Request syntax example:

{
   "PointInTimeRecoverySpecification": { 
      "PointInTimeRecoveryEnabled": boolean
   },
   "TableName": "string"
}

Response syntax example:

{
   "ContinuousBackupsDescription": { 
      "ContinuousBackupsStatus": "string",
      "PointInTimeRecoveryDescription": { 
         "EarliestRestorableDateTime": number,
         "LatestRestorableDateTime": number,
         "PointInTimeRecoveryStatus": "string"
      }
   }
}

Python

import boto3

dynamodb = boto3.client('dynamodb')

response = dynamodb.update_continuous_backups(
    TableName=<table_name>,
    PointInTimeRecoverySpecification={
        'PointInTimeRecoveryEnabled': True
    }
)

Delete a table with PITR enabled

When you delete a table that has point-in-time recovery enabled, DynamoDB automatically creates a backup snapshot called a system backup and retains it for 35 days (at no additional cost). You can use the system backup to restore the deleted table to the state it was in before deletion. All system backups follow a standard naming convention of table-name$DeletedTableBackup.