Branch Restore

With Neon's branch restore capability, you can easily restore a branch to an earlier state in its own or another branch's history. You can also use Time Travel Assist to connect to a specific point in your history retention window, where you can run read-only queries to pinpoint the exact moment you need to restore to.

How branch restore works

Restore from history

The restore operation lets you revert the state of a selected branch to an earlier point in time in its own or another branch's history, using time and date or Log Sequence Number (LSN). For example, you can revert to a state just before a data loss occurred.

The default history retention for a Neon project differs by plan. You can revert a branch to any time within your configured retention window, down to the millisecond.

A few key points to keep in mind about the restore operation:

• Restore backups are created automatically in case you make a mistake
• Current data is overwritten
• All databases on a branch are restored
• Connections to the selected branch are temporarily interrupted

Automatic backups

In case you need to rollback a restore, Neon preserves the branch's final state before the restore operation in an automatically created backup branch, which takes the following format:

{branch_name}_old_{head_timestamp}

You can use this backup to rollback the restore operation if necessary. The backup branches are listed on the Branches page in the Neon Console among your other branches.

This backup becomes the parent of your original branch, which makes rolling back the restore operation simple: Reset from parent.

Overwrite, not a merge

It is important to understand that whenever you restore a branch, you are performing a complete overwrite, not a merge or refresh. Everything on your current branch, data and schema, is replaced with the contents from the historical source. All data changes from the selected restore point onwards are excluded from the branch.

Changes apply to all databases

A reminder that in Neon's object hierarchy, a branch can include any number of databases. Keep this in mind when restoring branches. For example, let's say you want to restore lost data in a given database. If you restore your branch to an earlier point in time before the data loss occurred, the operation applies to all databases on the branch, not just the one you are troubleshooting. You can expect the restore operation to last a few seconds.

In general, Neon recommends that you avoid creating too many databases in a single Neon project. If you have multiple, distinct applications, each one deserves its own Neon project. A good rule of thumb: use one Neon project per source code repository.

Connections temporarily interrupted

Existing connections to the selected branch are temporarily interrupted during the restore operation. However, your connection details do not change. Applications can automatically re-establish their database connections as soon as the restore operation is finished.

Technical details

Neon is open source and built in public, so if you are interested in understanding the technical implementation of a branch restore operation, see the details below.

Time Travel Assist

To help troubleshoot your data's history, you can use Time Travel Assist to connect to any selected point in time within your history retention window and then run queries against that connection. It's a good idea to run this kind of query to make sure you've targeted the correct restore point before you restore a branch.

The restore operation and Time Travel Assist are meant to work together. When you select a branch and timestamp, you can either use that selection as your restore point or as the point in time connection to query against.

Ephemeral endpoints

Time travel assist leverages Neon's instant branching capability to create a temporary branch and compute endpoint at the selected point in time, which is automatically removed once you are done querying against this point-in-time connection. The compute endpoints are ephemeral: they are not listed on the Branches page or in a CLI or API list branches request.

However, you can see the history of operations related to the creation and deletion of the ephemeral branch on the Operations page:

• start_compute
• create_branch
• delete_timeline
• suspend_compute

How long do ephemeral endpoints remain active

The ephemeral endpoints are created according to your configured default compute size. An ephemeral endpoint remains active for as long as you keep running queries against it. After 10 seconds of inactivity, the timeline is deleted and the endpoint is removed.

How to use branch restore

You can use the Neon Console, CLI, or API to restore branches.

To make sure you choose the right restore point, we encourage you to use Time Travel Assist before running a restore job, but the backup branch is there if you need it. If you do need to revert your changes, you can Reset from parent since that is your branch's relationship to the restore point backup.

Using Time Travel Assist

Here is how to use the Time Travel Assist SQL editor:

1. Select the branch you want to query against, then select a timestamp, the same as you would to Restore a branch.

   This makes the selection for Time Travel Assist. Notice the updated fields above the SQL editor show the branch and timestamp you just selected.

2. Check that you have the right database selected to run your query against. Use the database selector under the SQL editor to switch to a different database for querying against.

3. Write your read-only query in the editor, then click Query at timestamp to run the query. You don't have to include time parameters in the query; the query is automatically targeted to your selected timestamp.

If your query is successful, you will see a table of results under the editor.

Depending on your query and the selected timestamp, instead of a table of results, you might see different error messages like:

Adjust your selected timestamp accordingly.

Billing considerations

There are minimal impacts to billing from the branch restore and Time Travel Assist features.

Restore from history (billing)

Restoring a branch to its own history adds to your number of branches — due to the restore_backup branch — but since they do not have any compute endpoint attached, they do not add to any consumption costs.

Time travel Assist (billing)

The ephemeral endpoints used to run your Time Travel Assist queries do contribute to your consumption usage totals for the billing period, like any other active endpoint that consumes resources.

A couple of details to note:

• The endpoints are shortlived. They are suspended 10 seconds after you stop querying.
• Since these endpoints are created according to your default compute size (which applies to all new branch computes you create), you may want to reduce this default if you're performing a lot of time-travel queries for troubleshooting.

Limitations

• You cannot delete a backup branch without first removing the child branch.

• Once you restore a branch, Reset from parent restores from the restore backup branch, not the original parent.

  For example, let's say you have a main branch with a child development branch dev/alex. You are working on dev/alex and decide to restore to an earlier point in time to fix something during development. At this point, dev/alex's parent switches from main to the backup dev/alex_old_timestamp. A day later, you want to refresh dev/alex with the latest data from main. You can't use Reset from parent, since the backup is now the parent. Instead, use Branch Restore and select the original parent main as the source.