Data retention with time travel and fail-safe

This document describes time travel and fail-safe data retention windows for datasets. During the time travel and fail-safe periods, data that you have changed or deleted in any table in the dataset continues to be stored in case you need to recover it.

Time travel and data retention

You can access changed or deleted data from any point within the time travel window, which covers the past seven days by default. Time travel lets you query data that was updated or deleted, restore a table or dataset that was deleted, restore a table that expired, or restore a table to a point in time.

You can set the duration of the time travel window, from a minimum of two days to a maximum of seven days. A longer time travel window is useful in cases where it is important to be able to recover updated or deleted data. A shorter time travel window lets you save on storage costs when using the physical storage billing model. These savings don't apply when using the logical storage billing model. For more information on how the storage billing model affects cost, see Billing. You can't set the time travel duration for less than 2 days.

Configure the time travel window

You set the time travel window at the dataset or project level. These settings then apply to all tables associated with the dataset or project.

Set the project-level time travel window

To specify the project-level default time travel window, you can use data definition language (DDL) statements. To learn how to set the project-level time travel window, see Manage configuration settings.

Set the dataset-level time travel window

To specify or modify the time travel window for a dataset, you can use the Cloud de Confiance console, the bq command-line tool, or the BigQuery API.

When modifying a time travel window, if the timestamp specifies a time outside the time travel window, or from before the table was created, then the query fails and returns an error like the following:

Table ID was created at time which is
before its allowed time travel interval timestamp. Creation
time: timestamp

How time travel works

BigQuery uses a columnar storage format. This means that data is organized and stored by column rather than by row. When you have a table with multiple columns, the values for each column across all rows are stored together in storage blocks.

When you modify a cell in a BigQuery table, you are changing a specific value within a particular row and a specific column. Because BigQuery stores columns together, modifying even a single cell within a column typically requires reading the entire storage block containing that column's data for the affected rows, applying the change, and then writing a new version of that storage block.

The time travel feature works by tracking the versions of storage blocks that make up your table. When you update data, BigQuery doesn't just modify the existing storage block in place. Instead, it creates a new version of the affected storage blocks with the updated data. The previous version is then retained for time travel purposes.

BigQuery uses adaptive file sizes and storage blocks. The size of storage blocks is not fixed but can vary depending on factors like the size of the table and its data distribution. Changing even one cell in a storage block changes the data for that column, potentially affecting many rows. Therefore, the unit of data that is versioned and sent to time travel is often the entire storage block that contains the modified data of that column, not just a single cell.

For this reason, changing one cell can result in more data being sent to time travel than just the size of the change.

How the time travel window affects table and dataset recovery

A deleted table or dataset uses the time travel window duration that was in effect at the time of deletion.

For example, if you have a time travel window duration of two days and then increase the duration to seven days, tables deleted before that change are still only recoverable for two days. Similarly, if you have a time travel window duration of five days and you reduce that duration to three days, any tables that were deleted before the change are still recoverable for five days.

Because time travel windows are set at the dataset level, you can't change the time travel window of a deleted dataset until it is undeleted.

If you reduce the time travel window duration, delete a table, and then realize that you need a longer period of recoverability for that data, you can create a snapshot of the table from a point in time prior to the table deletion. You must do this while the deleted table is still recoverable. For more information, see Create a table snapshot using time travel.

Time travel and row-level access

If a table has, or has had, row-level access policies, only a principal that is granted the following Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission can access historical data for the table:

Permission Resource
bigquery.rowAccessPolicies.overrideTimeTravelRestrictions The table whose historical data is being accessed

The following predefined IAM roles provide bigquery.rowAccessPolicies.overrideTimeTravelRestrictions permission:

Role Resource
roles/bigquery.admin The table whose historical data is being accessed
roles/bigquery.studioAdmin The table whose historical data is being accessed
roles/iam.databasesAdmin The table whose historical data is being accessed

You can also grant bigquery.rowAccessPolicies.overrideTimeTravelRestrictions permission using a custom role.

  • Run the following command to get the equivalent Unix epoch time by passing the UTC timestamp:

    date -d '2023-08-04 16:00:34.456789Z' +%s000

  • Replace the UNIX epoch time 1691164834000 received from the previous command in the bq command-line tool. Run the following command to restore a copy of the deleted table deletedTableID in another table restoredTable, within the same dataset myDatasetID:

    bq cp myProjectID:myDatasetID.deletedTableID@1691164834000 myProjectID:myDatasetID.restoredTable

Fail-safe

BigQuery provides a fail-safe period. During the fail-safe period, deleted data is automatically retained for an additional seven days after the time travel window, so that the data is available for emergency recovery. Data is recoverable at the table level from the point in time represented by the timestamp of when that data was deleted.

The fail-safe period isn't configurable and can't be extended. You must start and complete the table recovery before the seven-day fail-safe period expires, allowing enough time for the copy job to finish based on the size of your table.

When you perform the following operations, the data that is replaced or removed can be recovered through the time travel window. After the time travel window ends, this data then enters the fail-safe period for extended recovery time:

  • Table deletion or replacement: When a table is deleted, or when its data is fully replaced (for example, by using the WRITE_TRUNCATE write disposition in a load job or by using the CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE statement), the previous contents of the table are retained.
  • Partition deletion or expiration: If a specific partition is deleted or expires from a partitioned table, the data belonging to that specific partition is retained. Other partitions in the table aren't affected. Because you can't restore an individual partition, you must restore the entire table from a timestamp before the partition was deleted or expired. If the original table has a partition expiration, that setting is copied to the restored table. To query restored partitions that are older than the partition expiration time, update the partition expiration on the restored table.

Recover data from fail-safe storage

You can't query data in fail-safe storage directly, and you can't copy a table from fail-safe storage until Cloud Customer Care grants temporary fail-safe recovery access on the dataset. To recover a table from fail-safe storage, contact Cloud Customer Care to request fail-safe recovery access for your dataset, and then restore the table yourself by running a table copy job with a @TIME timestamp decorator.

Unlike time travel recovery, which only updates metadata pointers, fail-safe recovery must physically restore and replicate archived storage blocks before the table copy job finishes. When you restore a large or heavily partitioned table from fail-safe storage, keep the following behaviors in mind:

  • Longer copy times and timeouts: Restoring a multi-terabyte table or a table with many partitions from fail-safe storage can take significantly longer than a standard table copy. A single copy job might time out or fail with a transient internal error before all storage blocks are restored.
  • Incremental progress across retries: Fail-safe restoration progress is saved incrementally. Any storage blocks that are restored before a copy job times out or fails remain restored. If a bq cp command fails, retry the command using the exact same source table and @TIME timestamp decorator. Each retry skips the blocks that were already restored and continues restoring the remaining data until the copy job succeeds.
  • Time-sensitive recovery window: Contact Cloud Customer Care as early as possible within the seven-day fail-safe period, especially for large tables, so that you have enough time to run retries before the fail-safe period expires.

Billing

If you set your storage billing model to use physical bytes, you are billed separately for the bytes used for time travel and fail-safe storage. Time travel and fail-safe storage are charged at the active physical storage rate. You can configure the time travel window to balance storage costs with your data retention needs.

If you set your storage billing model to use logical bytes, the total storage costs for time travel and fail-safe storage are included in the base rate that you are charged.

The following table show a comparison of physical and logical storage costs:

Billing model What do you pay for?
Physical (compressed) storage
  • You pay for active bytes
  • You pay for long-term storage
  • You pay for time travel storage
  • You pay for fail-safe storage
Logical (uncompressed) storage (default setting)
  • You pay for active storage
  • You pay for long-term storage
  • You don't pay for time travel storage
  • You don't pay for fail-safe storage

If you use physical storage, you can see the bytes used by time travel and fail-safe by looking at the TIME_TRAVEL_PHYSICAL_BYTES and FAIL_SAFE_PHYSICAL_BYTES columns in the TABLE_STORAGE and TABLE_STORAGE_BY_ORGANIZATION views. For an example of how to use one of these views to estimate your costs, see Forecast storage billing.

Storage costs apply for time travel and fail-safe data, but you are only billed if data storage fees don't apply elsewhere in BigQuery. The following details apply:

  • When a table is created, there is no time travel or fail-safe storage cost.
  • If data is changed or deleted, then you are charged for the storage of the changed or deleted data saved by time travel during the time travel window and the fail-safe period. This is similar to the storage pricing for table snapshots and clones.
  • Temporary tables aren't billed for fail-safe storage.

Data retention example

The following table shows how deleted or changed data moves between storage retention windows. This example shows a situation where the total active storage is 200 GiB and 50 GiB is deleted with a time travel window of seven days:

Day 0 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10 Day 11 Day 12 Day 13 Day 14 Day 15
Active storage 200 150 150 150 150 150 150 150 150 150 150 150 150 150 150 150
Time travel storage 50 50 50 50 50 50 50
Fail-safe storage 50 50 50 50 50 50 50

Deleting data from long-term physical storage works in the same way.

Limitations

Data retrieval with time travel is subject to the following limitations:

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