Backups and Snapshots - please explain further?

Hi team Prismic!

On your updated pricing page, you now have something called "Backups and Snapshots", which states "Prismic ensures backups through snapshots of user content.".

This is only available to Platinum ($500) and Enterprise accounts.

My question is - how do the existing backups work then for all other accounts?

And have you made any changes to how backups were working previously?

Should we be concerned if we are on one of the other accounts?
e.g. if there is a data loss event at your data repository?

The snapshots part of the new functionality makes sense, this would be a useful but non essential feature, as it would allow manual rollbacks or staging of content. But for all other accounts the assumption would be that the content is regularly backed up, so it is always safe in the event of data loss or catastrophic events?

Thanks!
Tim

Hey Tim!

As stated in our Security page, in the Data protection section:

Customer backups

Customers are free to comply with additional backup requirements beyond what Prismic provides by using the Export module (starting from the medium plan) or by querying their Repository API endpoint.

You can simply backup all of your content stored on your Prismic repository by querying all of the documents exposed by the API. Note that this will not fetch drafts, archived documents, or assets that are not linked to a document.

And to backup Custom types, the best practice is to keep a copy of the custom type in your codebase as it’s reflected there in the code. You can read more about that here:

If you have accidentally deleted a custom type, you can retrieve it:

(Hi!) Continuing the discussion from Backups and Snapshots - please explain further?:

Respectfully, I find Prismic's backup options bewildering. Elsewhere in the cloud hosting industry, backups or snapshots can be enabled for $1/mo (DigitalOcean etc).

Prismic offers a generous amount of storage for their lower plans. If CDN overage is just $0.10/GB, why do backups need to cost $500/mo?

I really like Prismic, as do my clients, but this gives me pause from using it further. How can I as a provider hand-over a product that doesn't offer a reasonable means to ensure their data isn't completely lost?

Your security page lists the following but it doesn't distinguish that this feature is based on your plan:

Backups and data recovery
Prismic ensures backups through snapshots and retains them on a pre-established rule set in Amazon S3 buckets (Amazon's highly available cloud storage). Backups are used to restore a customer’s content Repository in the case of multiple disk failures or total data center loss. Amazon S3 repositories are distributed amongst multiple Availability Zones (data centers) and multiple devices within each Availability Zone for redundancy. From here, Prismic is able to perform granular level recovery.

Can you please clarify here which customers are covered in the restoration?

And from the previous community post, this is offered:

Customers are free to comply with additional backup requirements beyond what Prismic provides by using the Export module ( starting from the medium plan ) or by querying their Repository API endpoint.

But what is the utility of querying the Repository API if you can't import it into Prismic in the event of a disk failure?

I'm sure customers would opt-in for back-ups as an add-on if it was offered at a reasonable price.

Or perhaps Prismic could at least ensure that DIY "Customer backups" could be recovered manually, with guidance on a technique?

Thank you for your consideration.

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Just want to back up evvrritt with his post. And am also hoping for some clarification on his questions. My client would love an opt-in for back-ups but the only option 500 USD a month or paying us to do it for them manually each month.

In addition, the documentation is not very welcoming on how to 'back-up' manually. I was hoping for something more comprehensive than just sending beginner developers (like myself) to "How to query the Api" when asked how to backup vital data. In short, I don't fully understand what I need to do to retrieve all the files and json from the API locally.

Thank you

2 Likes

Hi,

We have restoration processes for the whole platform as per our Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans. However, we only contractually guarantee backups and recovery for Platinum and Enterprise customers. In the unlikely event of a major disruption resulting in a data loss, we are able to recover data from snapshots in priority for Enterprise clients (Recovery Point Objective of 1 day) and Platinum (Recovery Point Objective 7 days).

I hope that clarifies,

Nathan

Hi @Nathan,

Could you kindly explain the restoration process for non Enterprise and non Platinum customers please? As I'm guessing the vast majority of customers on Prismic are of the non Enterprise/Platinum variety.

If you could provide a few different scenarios and hypothetical situations that would be much appreciated, and go a long way to answering some of the concerns above.

In addition, are Medium plan customers who are under the old pricing system included in your Platinum/Enterprise scenarios? Since that originally did have the backup guarantee. Could you provide some clarification and assurances here too please?

Cheers,
Tim

2 Likes

Hi Tim,
Sorry, I can't share more internal and operational details about our recovery plans and scenarios here. This might be something we'll elaborate on publicly at some point. As for your question about the Medium plan: backup and snapshot guarantees were not originally part of this service tier.

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