Open Data Infrastructure
Lakekeeper Disaster Recovery Drills for Open Catalogs
How Lakekeeper disaster recovery drills should test catalog metadata restore, credential boundaries, audit trails, and table trust.
An Iceberg table is not recovered when object storage comes back. It is recovered when the catalog can point trustworthy consumers at the right table state again.
Catalog recovery is table recovery
Lakekeeper describes itself as an Apache Iceberg REST catalog. Its concepts documentation calls out operational dependencies and recommends backing up the Postgres database before migrations.
That is the right instinct. For an open catalog, recovery is not only about service uptime. It is about restoring table metadata pointers, catalog entities, credentials, audit history, and downstream trust.
A drill needs evidence
A disaster recovery drill should prove that operators can restore the catalog database, verify table metadata, reestablish credential boundaries, and confirm that approved engines can read the expected snapshots. It should also prove that denied access remains denied after recovery.
The drill should produce artifacts: restore time, restore point, tables sampled, principals tested, policies checked, failed assumptions, and downstream data products validated.
Core idea: Catalog recovery is a trust exercise, not a screenshot of a green service dashboard.
The ODI recovery model
Open Data Infrastructure makes recovery harder and more important because multiple engines may depend on the same catalog boundary. Recovery has to preserve openness and control at the same time.
For adjacent context, read Lakekeeper multi-tenant catalogs, Polaris and Lakekeeper operations, and the Open Data Infrastructure stack.
What breaks first
- The catalog service starts, but table metadata pointers are stale.
- Credentials are restored too broadly to get engines running again.
- Audit logs are not backed up with the catalog state they explain.
- Downstream teams trust recovered tables without checking snapshot identity or policy behavior.
Questions to ask
Ask what is backed up, how often recovery is tested, and which table, identity, and policy checks prove success. Ask whether drills include both allowed and denied access paths.
A catalog backup is useful. A catalog recovery drill is evidence.
Sources to start with
These primary sources anchor the technical claims in this guide.
- Lakekeeper documentation
- Lakekeeper concepts documentation
- Apache Iceberg REST catalog specification
- Apache Iceberg table specification
The catalog is recovered when consumers can trust it again.