Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)

Enabled Continuous Archiving

When creating a service you need to pass the custom parameter continuous_archiving in order to create an a9s PostgreSQL instance with Continuous Archiving enabled:

cf cs a9s-postgresql13 postgresql-replica-small mypsql \
  -c '{"continuous_archiving": "enabled"}'

Currently, you cannot update a service using cf update-service instance to change the custom parameter continuous_archiving.

Data Protection

a9s PostgreSQL clusters with Continuous Archiving enabled include an additional safety mechanism to prevent accidental cluster re-initialization. An external bootstrap lock is created outside the PostgreSQL data directory, which survives data directory deletion, and protects the cluster from losing its database system identifier.

This protection is particularly important during Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) operations, where failed recovery attempts could otherwise trigger a complete cluster re-initialization, breaking the WAL file chain and making existing backups unusable.

For more information about cluster recovery procedures and the bootstrap lock mechanism, see the Cluster Recovery documentation.