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OpenSearch Serverless does support snapshots and restore operations. The service automatically takes daily snapshots of your collections and retains them for 14 days at no additional cost.
While it isn’t currently possible to change the snapshot frequency or retention period, you can also create manual snapshots using the OpenSearch snapshot APIs. These snapshots are stored in an AWS-managed S3 bucket, and both automated and manual snapshots follow the same 14-day retention policy. When performing snapshot operations, you’ll need to use the repository name cs-automated, since custom repository names aren’t supported in OpenSearch Serverless.
Here are the most commonly used APIs:
- Create a snapshot: PUT _snapshot/cs-automated/my-snapshot
- Check snapshot status: GET _snapshot/cs-automated/my-snapshot/_status
- Restore a snapshot: POST _snapshot/cs-automated/my-snapshot/_restore
A few important details to keep in mind: Restored indices will have different UUIDs from their original versions. Snapshots can only be restored to the same collection they were taken from (cross-collection restores aren’t supported). Running snapshot or restore operations may have a temporary performance impact on your collection.
You can find more information in the following documentation: [+] Backing up collections using snapshots – Amazon OpenSearch Service [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/opensearch-service/latest/developerguide/serverless-snapshots.html]
The limitation listed in the overview page is currently outdated, and our documentation team is in the process of updating it to reflect the current functionality. [+] Amazon OpenSearch Serverless overview [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/opensearch-service/latest/developerguide/serverless-overview.html#serverless-limitations]
Hope this clears things up.
There appears to be some confusion regarding snapshot functionality in Amazon OpenSearch Serverless. Based on the current documentation, OpenSearch Serverless does not support taking or restoring snapshots of collections. This is explicitly listed as a limitation in the OpenSearch Serverless overview documentation.
The confusion may stem from a future feature announcement. According to the document history for Amazon OpenSearch Service, OpenSearch Serverless snapshots are planned to be released as a new feature on July 30, 2025. This upcoming feature will provide automatic hourly backups of your collections without manual configuration, offering disaster recovery capabilities.
Currently, you cannot use the _snapshot endpoints with OpenSearch Serverless collections, which explains the 404 errors you're encountering. The snapshot functionality is available in standard Amazon OpenSearch Service domains but not yet in the serverless offering.
If you need to migrate data to OpenSearch Serverless now, you'll need to use alternative methods such as reindexing your data directly from your source to the serverless collection, as the documentation notes "There's currently no way to automatically migrate your data from a managed OpenSearch Service domain to a serverless collection. You must reindex your data from a domain to a collection."
Sources
What is Amazon OpenSearch Serverless? - Amazon OpenSearch Service
Document history for Amazon OpenSearch Service - Amazon OpenSearch Service
Backing up collections using snapshots - Amazon OpenSearch Service
The date of the release announcement was in August of 2025. This re:Post was made on Nov. 7th 2025. The "future date" ofJuly 30th, 2025 was 3 months and 2 weeks ago in the past (not future). It would be great to get a human answer from someone who knows whats going on with the documentation because the bot post above is hallucinating.