11X Faster ScyllaDB Backup

ScyllaDB's 2025.3 release introduces a significant enhancement in its backup process by integrating native backup capabilities, leveraging Seastar's CPU and I/O scheduling to achieve up to 11 times faster backup speeds. This new approach eliminates the reliance on an external process, which previously caused resource contention and slower backup speeds when using ScyllaDB Manager and the rclone agent. By managing backups internally, ScyllaDB can prioritize resources more effectively, ensuring that user queries maintain low latency even during backup operations. Currently available for AWS with plans to expand to other platforms like GCP and Azure, this native backup system delivers a notable performance improvement, as demonstrated by a test where the native backup achieved a throughput of approximately 900 MB/s compared to 80 MB/s with rclone. The focus now shifts to optimizing the restore process, which presents complex challenges such as handling different cluster topologies and replication factors. Future plans include using object storage for both backup and restore, as well as for data tiering, allowing ScyllaDB to access data directly from object storage.