---
title: Restore a snapshot across clusters
description: Snapshots can be restored to either the same Elasticsearch cluster or to another cluster. If you are restoring all indices to a new deployment, you can...
url: https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore/ece-restore-across-clusters
products:
  - Elastic Cloud Enterprise
  - Elastic Cloud Hosted
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Hosted: Generally available
  - Elastic Cloud Enterprise: Generally available
---

# Restore a snapshot across clusters
Snapshots can be restored to either the same Elasticsearch cluster or to another cluster. If you are restoring all indices to a new deployment, you can also [create a new deployment from a snapshot](https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore/ece-restore-snapshots-into-new-deployment).
<note>
  [Native users](https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/users-roles/cluster-or-deployment-auth/native) created directly in Elasticsearch are not included when you restore across clusters. Only data from Elasticsearch indices is restored. If you want to create a new cluster from a snapshot with the same users as your old cluster, you need to recreate those users manually on the new cluster.
</note>


## When to restore across clusters

Restoring to another cluster is useful for scenarios where isolating activities on a separate cluster is beneficial, such as:
<definitions>
  <definition term="Performing ad hoc analytics">
    For most logging and metrics use cases, it is cost prohibitive to have all the data in memory, even if it would provide the best performance for aggregations. Cloning the relevant data to an ad hoc analytics cluster that can be discarded after use is a cost effective way to experiment with your data, without risk to existing clusters used for production.
  </definition>
  <definition term="Enabling your developers">
    Realistic test data is crucial for uncovering unexpected errors early in the development cycle. What can be more realistic than actual data from a production cluster? Giving your developers access to real production data is a great way to break down silos.
  </definition>
  <definition term="Testing mapping changes">
    Mapping changes almost always require reindexing. Unless your data volume is trivial, reindexing requires time and tweaking the parameters to achieve the best reindexing performance usually takes a little trial and error. While this use case could also be handled by running the scan and scroll query directly against the source cluster, a long lived scroll has the side effect of blocking merges even if the scan query is very light weight.
  </definition>
  <definition term="Integration testing">
    Test your application against a real live Elasticsearch cluster with actual data. If you automate this, you could also aggregate performance metrics from the tests and use those metrics to detect if a change in your application has introduced a performance degradation.
  </definition>
</definitions>


## Requirements

In **Elastic Cloud Hosted**, a cluster is eligible as a destination for a snapshot restore if it meets these criteria:
- The cluster is in the same region. For example, a snapshot taken in `eu-west-1` cannot be restored to `us-east-1` at this point. If you need to restore snapshots across regions, create the destination deployment, connect it to the source repository as a [custom repository](/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore/elastic-cloud-hosted#ess-repo-types), and then [restore from a snapshot](https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore/restore-snapshot).
- The destination cluster is able to read the indices. You can generally restore to your Elasticsearch cluster snapshots of indices created back to the previous major version, but refer to the [version compatibility matrix](/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore#snapshot-restore-version-compatibility) for all the details.

The list of available snapshots can be found in the `found-snapshots` repository.
In **Elastic Cloud Enterprise**, a cluster is eligible as a destination for a snapshot restore if it meets these criteria:
- The destination cluster is able to read the indices. You can generally restore to your Elasticsearch cluster snapshots of indices created back to the previous major version, but refer to the [version compatibility matrix](/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore#snapshot-restore-version-compatibility) for all the details.


## Restore paths

To restore built-in snapshots across clusters, follow one of these procedures:
- [Restore snapshot into a new deployment](https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore/ece-restore-snapshots-into-new-deployment)
- [Restore snapshot into an existing deployment](https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore/ece-restore-snapshots-into-existing-deployment)

<note>
  In Elastic Cloud Hosted, you can use dedicated Elastic Cloud APIs to expose the built-in snapshot repository (`found-snapshots`) from one deployment to another as read-only. This allows a deployment to access and restore snapshots from another deployment without manually configuring snapshot repositories:
  - [Attach another deployment's built-in snapshot repository](https://www.elastic.co/docs/api/doc/cloud/operation/operation-create-deployment-es-resource-snapshot-repository)
  - [List the attached snapshot repositories](https://www.elastic.co/docs/api/doc/cloud/operation/operation-get-deployment-es-resource-snapshot-repository)
  - [Remove an attached snapshot repository](https://www.elastic.co/docs/api/doc/cloud/operation/operation-delete-deployment-es-resource-snapshot-repository)
</note>

When restoring snapshots across clusters on Elastic Cloud Hosted or Elastic Cloud Enterprise, the platform creates a new repository called `\_clone_{{clusterIdPrefix}}`, which persists until manually deleted. If the repository is still in use, for example by mounted searchable snapshots, it can’t be removed.
<warning>
  When restoring from a deployment that’s using searchable snapshots, refer to [Restore snapshots containing searchable snapshots indices across clusters](https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/tools/snapshot-and-restore/ece-restore-snapshots-containing-searchable-snapshots-indices-across-clusters).
</warning>