QLDB Restore Backups Option?

Question

A customer is using QLDB.

I have seen that you can export journal data from QLDB directly to S3 by submitting the journal export request:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/qldb/latest/developerguide/export-journal.html

Can this be seen as a traditional DB backup?

Secondly, is there an option of 'importing' that QLDB backup into an existing ledger or into a new ledger?

Thirdly, are there any plans to incorporate automatic QLDB backups into the AWS Backup service?

I know QLDB is relatively new, but knowing this would calm customers already using QLDB that backups are also thing with QLDB.

Thank you in advance.

Accepted Answer

There is *currently* no mechanism that I am aware of for restoring exports of QLDB and exactly recreating a ledger. You can build a process to take the export and import all the data to a new ledger, but the internal timestamps will reflect the time you imported the data into the copy, not the time they were added to the original ledger, and these timestamps are part of the hashes so it will not be an exact copy.

If you have your own timestamps within your data and you are using QLDB more for it's versioning capabilities than it's cryptographic integrity features then that may be sufficient.

It is my understanding that behind the scenes the data is replicated multiple times across multiple AZs (somewhat similar to Aurora) to reduce the risk of data loss within a ledger.

If you are working with a customer who is using QLDB I would recommend reaching out to their AWS Account Team and having them get you in touch with the QLDB team. They may be able to give you insight into their roadmap and whether more traditional backup/restore options are planned. QLDB is actively under development and has added some major new features in the last year, including the more fine grained access controls and the use of customer managed KMS keys for data at rest.

QLDB Restore Backups Option?

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