Enterprise‑Level Redis RDB Cold Backup and Recovery Guide

Redis RDB persistence creates memory snapshots that are low‑frequency, fast to restore, and highly configurable, making them suitable for enterprise cold‑backup solutions where the snapshot files are copied to other machines or cloud servers.

Reasons to use RDB for cold backup:

The generated RDB file changes rarely unless checkpoints are triggered.

RDB snapshots restore faster than AOF logs.

Generation strategies are fully configurable to match different usage scenarios.

Backup scheme

1. Use Linux crontab to schedule backup scripts. 2. Perform an hourly backup of the latest RDB snapshot, retaining the last 48 hours. 3. Perform a daily backup, retaining the last month. 4. Transfer backups to a remote cloud server each night.

Hourly backup

Create the necessary directories and a shell script:

mkdir /usr/local/redis
mkdir /usr/local/redis/copy
vi /usr/local/redis/copy/redis_rdb_copy_hourly.sh
mkdir /usr/local/redis/snapshotting
chmod 777 /usr/local/redis

Hourly script ( redis_rdb_copy_hourly.sh ) content:

#!/bin/sh 
cur_date=`date +%Y%m%d%H`
rm -rf /usr/local/redis/snapshotting/$cur_date
mkdir /usr/local/redis/snapshotting/$cur_date
cp /var/redis/6379/dump.rdb /usr/local/redis/snapshotting/$cur_date

del_date=`date -d -48hour +%Y%m%d`
rm -rf /usr/local/redis/snapshotting/$del_date

Schedule it to run at the start of each hour:

crontab -e
0 * * * * sh /usr/local.redis/copy/redis_rdb_copy_hourly.sh

Manually test the script:

cd /usr/local/redis/copy
./redis_rdb_copy_hourly.sh

The script creates a directory named with the UTC hour (e.g., 2021080809 ) containing the dump.rdb file.

Daily backup

Create a daily backup script:

vi /usr/local/redis/copy/redis_rdb_copy_daily.sh
chomd 777 *

Daily script content:

#!/bin/sh 
cur_date=`date +%Y%m%d`
rm -rf /usr/local/redis/snapshotting/$cur_date
mkdir /usr/local/redis/snapshotting/$cur_date
cp /var/redis/6379/dump.rdb /usr/local/redis/snapshotting/$cur_date

del_date=`date -d -1month +%Y%m%d`
rm -rf /usr/local/redis/snapshotting/$del_date

Schedule it to run at midnight each day:

crontab -e
0 0 * * * sh /usr/local/redis/copy/redis_rdb_copy_daily.sh

Manually test the daily script:

cd /usr/local/redis/copy
./redis_rdb_copy_daily.sh

The script creates a directory named with the UTC date (e.g., 20210808 ) containing the dump.rdb file.

Recovery from backup

If data corruption occurs, restore by selecting an earlier backup:

Stop Redis and temporarily disable AOF persistence.

Delete existing AOF log and RDB snapshot files.

Copy the chosen backup dump.rdb into Redis's data directory.

Restart Redis and verify data integrity.

Re‑enable AOF so that Redis writes memory changes to the AOF file.

Stop Redis again, adjust the configuration to ensure AOF is active, and restart.

This procedure ensures that a clean snapshot can be restored quickly, providing a reliable safety net for production environments.