Point-in-time recovery (PITR) in DynamoDB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Enable and Verify Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) in DynamoDB

📖 Scenario: You are managing a DynamoDB table for a small online store. To protect against accidental data loss, you want to enable Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) so you can restore the table to any second in the last 35 days if needed.

🎯 Goal: Enable PITR on the DynamoDB table named Orders and verify that PITR is active.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a DynamoDB table named Orders with a primary key OrderId (string).

Enable Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) on the Orders table.

Check and confirm that PITR is enabled on the Orders table.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Enabling PITR helps protect your DynamoDB tables from accidental deletes or updates by allowing you to restore data to any second in the past 35 days.

💼 Career

Database administrators and cloud engineers often enable PITR to ensure data durability and quick recovery in production environments.

1

Create the DynamoDB table Orders

Write the AWS CLI command to create a DynamoDB table named Orders with a primary key called OrderId of type string.

DynamoDB

# Your AWS CLI command to create the Orders table

Need a hint?

Use aws dynamodb create-table with --table-name Orders, define OrderId as the HASH key of type string (S).

2

Enable Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) on Orders

Write the AWS CLI command to enable Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) on the DynamoDB table named Orders.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb create-table --table-name Orders --attribute-definitions AttributeName=OrderId,AttributeType=S --key-schema AttributeName=OrderId,KeyType=HASH --provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=5,WriteCapacityUnits=5
# Your AWS CLI command to enable PITR on Orders

Need a hint?

Use aws dynamodb update-continuous-backups with --point-in-time-recovery-specification PointInTimeRecoveryEnabled=true to enable PITR.

3

Check if PITR is enabled on Orders

Write the AWS CLI command to describe the continuous backups status of the DynamoDB table named Orders to verify if PITR is enabled.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb create-table --table-name Orders --attribute-definitions AttributeName=OrderId,AttributeType=S --key-schema AttributeName=OrderId,KeyType=HASH --provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=5,WriteCapacityUnits=5
aws dynamodb update-continuous-backups --table-name Orders --point-in-time-recovery-specification PointInTimeRecoveryEnabled=true
# Your AWS CLI command to check PITR status on Orders

Need a hint?

Use aws dynamodb describe-continuous-backups with --table-name Orders to see if PITR is enabled.

4

Confirm PITR is active and ready

Add a command to check the table status to ensure the Orders table is active and ready for PITR.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb create-table --table-name Orders --attribute-definitions AttributeName=OrderId,AttributeType=S --key-schema AttributeName=OrderId,KeyType=HASH --provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=5,WriteCapacityUnits=5
aws dynamodb update-continuous-backups --table-name Orders --point-in-time-recovery-specification PointInTimeRecoveryEnabled=true
aws dynamodb describe-continuous-backups --table-name Orders
# Your AWS CLI command to check the table status of Orders

Need a hint?

Use aws dynamodb describe-table with --table-name Orders to confirm the table is active.