Restore

This section guides you through restoring a PostgreSQL database.

Console (UI)

To restore a cluster in the Console UI, open Clusters in the sidebar, select Backups, and click Restore.

The Restore cluster dialog provides three restore modes:

Latest

Select Latest to recover the cluster to the latest available state. By default, recovery replays all available WAL files from the archive.

info

Optionally enable Immediate recovery to stop recovery as soon as a consistent state is reached instead of replaying all available WAL files. This option is typically used when the recovery must complete as quickly as possible, for example, for very large databases. Use this option with caution: it directly affects the recovery point objective (RPO), because the most recent WAL records may not be replayed.

Point in time

Select Point in time to restore the cluster to a specific date and time. Enter the Date and Time, and adjust the UTC offset to match the timezone of the recovery target.

Specific backup

Select Specific backup to restore the cluster from a particular backup. Choose the required Backup ID from the list of available backups.

info

The Target timeline option is available only when Expert Mode is enabled. It defaults to latest; you can select current, latest, or specify a timeline ID.

warning

For all restore modes, the cluster data will be replaced and the cluster will be unavailable during recovery. Recovery time depends on the amount of data and disk performance.

Confirm that you understand the impact, then click Restore cluster to start the recovery.

Wait for the restore to complete. You can monitor its progress and view the logs on the Operations page.

Command line

The restore_pgcluster playbook restores the current PostgreSQL cluster from a pgBackRest or WAL-G backup. When needed, it prepares the recovery and Patroni configuration, then restores the master and replica nodes.

To restore the cluster run the following command:

docker run --rm -it \
  -e ANSIBLE_SSH_ARGS="-F none" \
  -e ANSIBLE_INVENTORY=/project/inventory \
  -v $PWD:/project \
  -v $HOME/.ssh:/root/.ssh \
  autobase/automation:2.11.0 \
    ansible-playbook restore_pgcluster.yml

Use the following variables to select the recovery target:

# Optional. Restore a specific backup set. An empty value uses the latest backup.
restore_backup_name: "20260625-120000F_20260626-120000I"

# Optional. Stop recovery as soon as a consistent state is reached.
restore_immediate: true

# Optional. Restore to a specific point in time, for example:
restore_target_time: "2026-06-26 11:00:00+00"

# Optional. Recovery timeline: current, latest, or a timeline ID.
restore_target_timeline: latest

# Optional. Action after reaching the recovery target: pause, promote, or shutdown.
restore_target_action: promote

If no target time or immediate recovery is configured, the playbook performs a restore from latest backup and replays the available WAL records. It also prints recovery details from the PostgreSQL log when the operation completes.