Restore a backup
Restore a previous backup of your Camunda 8 Self-Managed components and cluster when using Elasticsearch or OpenSearch as secondary storage.
Choosing a restore approach
Restore the Zeebe partitions with one of two approaches. Both include restoring the Elasticsearch/OpenSearch snapshots as one of their steps.
Restore API
Recommended, Camunda 8.10+. Restore through the REST API; brokers stay up in recovery mode.
Restore Application (legacy)
Legacy, all versions. Stop all components and run the standalone restore app.
About restoring a backup
A restore consists of two parts: restoring the Elasticsearch/OpenSearch snapshots, and restoring the Zeebe partitions from the Zeebe primary storage backup.
When restoring Camunda 8 from a backup, all components must be restored from their backup that corresponds to the same backup ID.
Prerequisites
The following general prerequisites are required before you can restore a backup, regardless of the restore approach:
| Prerequisite | Description |
|---|---|
| Component clean state | The restore process assumes a clean state for all components, including Elasticsearch/OpenSearch. This means no prior persistent volumes or component state should exist - all data is restored from scratch. |
| Camunda version | Backups must be restored using the exact Camunda version they were created with. As noted during the backup process, the version is embedded in the backup name. This is essential because starting a component with a mismatched version may result in startup failures due to schema incompatibilities with Elasticsearch/OpenSearch and the component itself. Although schema changes are generally avoided in patch releases, they can still occur. When using the Camunda Helm chart, this means figuring out the corresponding version. For this the Camunda Helm chart Version Matrix can help. Click on the |
Example: Work out your correct Camunda version
Our Backups look as follows:
camunda_optimize_1748937221_8.8.0_part_1_of_2
camunda_optimize_1748937221_8.8.0_part_2_of_2
camunda_webapps_1748937221_8.8.0_part_1_of_5
camunda_webapps_1748937221_8.8.0_part_2_of_5
camunda_webapps_1748937221_8.8.0_part_3_of_5
camunda_webapps_1748937221_8.8.0_part_4_of_5
camunda_webapps_1748937221_8.8.0_part_5_of_5
camunda_zeebe_records_backup_1748937221
From this, we know:
- Optimize: 8.8.0
- Web Applications (Operate / Tasklist): 8.8.0
Based on this, we can look in the matrix versioning of 8.8 and see the corresponding Camunda Helm chart version is 13.0.0.