---
title: "Aerospike Backup Control release notes"
description: "Release notes for Aerospike Backup Control (absctl) v1.0.0, the new unified tool for database backup and restore."
---

# Aerospike Backup Control release notes

> For the complete documentation index see: [llms.txt](https://aerospike.com/docs/llms.txt)
> 
> All documentation pages available in markdown.

## absctl 1.0.0

February 2026  |  [**Download**](https://github.com/aerospike/absctl/releases)

This initial release introduces `absctl`, the new Aerospike Backup Control command-line tool. Designed to replace legacy `asbackup` and `asrestore`, `absctl` consolidates backup and restore workflows into a single utility featuring native cloud support and improved operational efficiency.

### Highlights

#### Unified CLI

-   Backup and restore consolidated into one tool: `absctl backup` and `absctl restore`
-   YAML configuration file support for scripted and scheduled operations
-   Structured JSON logging for log aggregation pipelines

#### Improved partition-based scanning

Backups use balanced partition-based scans with configurable parallelism (`--parallel`) for efficient hardware utilization, ensuring minimal and balanced load across all Aerospike cluster nodes:

-   **Parallel partition scanning**: Configurable parallelism (1-32 workers) with intelligent partition distribution
-   **Partition filtering**: Back up specific partition ranges or individual partitions
-   **Minimal cluster impact**: Rate limiting (RPS and bandwidth) to prevent backup operations from affecting production workloads
-   **Resumable backups**: State file support for continuing interrupted backups from the last checkpoint

::: note
Migrating from `asbackup` may require performance tuning of some parameters on both the Aerospike cluster and `absctl`.
:::

#### Storage backend support

Flexible storage options for backup and restore:

-   **Local disk**: Direct backup to local filesystem with configurable buffer sizes
-   **Amazon S3**: Full support including storage classes (Standard, Glacier, Intelligent-Tiering, etc.), multipart uploads, and MinIO compatibility via endpoint override
-   **Google Cloud Storage (GCS)**: Native GCP bucket integration
-   **Azure Blob Storage**: Complete Azure container support with both account key and Azure Active Directory authentication

Cloud backups do not require intermediate local storage.

#### AZ-aware backup

Backup node selection to optimize network topology and reduce costs:

-   `--prefer-racks`: Prioritize reading from specific rack IDs while still backing up all data
-   `--rack-list`: Back up exclusively from specified racks for complete traffic isolation

Prevents cross-availability-zone network traffic, reducing latency and cloud egress costs.

#### Additional features

-   TLS/mTLS for cluster connections
-   AES-128/256 encryption for backup files
-   ZSTD compression
-   Aerospike Secret Agent integration for credential management

### Backward compatibility

-   Backup files (`.asb`) created by `asbackup` can be restored with `absctl`
-   Most CLI flags preserved from legacy tools

For migration details, see [Legacy migration](https://aerospike.com/docs/database/tools/backup-and-restore/legacy-migration).