I’m the Project Owner of an Atlas project running on an M30 Dedicated tier cluster. For our staging environment, we don’t actually need Point-in-Time Restore (PITR), but I can’t find an option in the Atlas UI to turn it off.
Since my organization only has Basic support, I also don’t have access to raise a support ticket.
Has anyone here dealt with this before? Is there a way to disable PITR without going through MongoDB support, or is upgrading the support plan the only path?
Any suggestions or experiences would be really helpful. Thanks in advance!
You do not need a support plan to turn off PITR backups. You can edit this on your own via the cluster configuration screen in the UI easily. You can also disable through the API but I’ll outline the UI method as it’s easier to verify youre doing what you want.
Go the the configuration page for the cluster that you would like to disable PITR for. You can find this on the upper right side of your screen when looking at a specific cluster in the UI. It’s between the Connect button and the additional options button. Once on the configuration screen go to the “Additional Settings” dropdown of that page.
It should be the first toggle in that Additional Settings dropdown, you will see “Turn on Cloud Backup” as well as a sub toggle under that for “Continuous Cloud Backups”. Continuous Cloud Backups is our Point In Time offering. If you want to just remove the PIT capability but still want to take snapshots then you can just untoggle the Continuous Cloud Backups toggle. If you would like to completely turn off all backups (snapshot and PIT) then you can untoggle the main “Turn on Cloud Backup” toggle.
IMPORTANT NOTE - If you choose to turn the backups off completely, this WILL delete all pre-existing backups (snapshots and PIT) for your cluster and you will have no backups at all from before. This action is irreversible. Turning off or altering your type of backup will delete all of your existing snapshots immediately. If you want to keep old versions of your data, visit the backup dashboard for that cluster first, and download your snapshots.
Once you are happy with whichever option you would like to disable, just hit “Review Changes” button at the bottom of the configuration screen and then you will see one more page showing you the change were you will need to hit the “Apply Changes” button for these changes to go into affect for your cluster.
Hope this helps and again please remember by turning the cloud backups off, you will delete all existing snapshots immediately and there is no way to get those back once you have done this.
That was exactly what I needed. I found the Additional Settings section in the cluster configuration screen and successfully disabled the Continuous Cloud Backups toggle. Everything’s working as expected now.
Really appreciate the clear step-by-step explanation—it made it easy to get this done.
Disabling Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR), which is part of Continuous Cloud Backup in MongoDB Atlas, depends on your cluster settings and project-level backup policies. Here’s how you can go about it:
Steps to Disable PITR (if allowed):
Log into MongoDB Atlas and go to your project dashboard.
Navigate to the Clusters view and click on your M30 cluster.
Open the Backup tab (or Backup Settings).
Find the section labeled Continuous Backup, Point-in-Time Recovery, or Restore Window.
If editable, toggle PITR off or set the restore window to None.
Save the changes.
After doing this, PITR will be disabled and Atlas will no longer retain the oplog history needed for point-in-time restores. You will still retain scheduled snapshots based on your backup policy.
Important Notes:
Backup Compliance Policy: If your project has a backup compliance policy enforced that requires PITR, the option to disable it might be grayed out. In that case, only a project owner can remove or modify the policy.
Permissions: You need to have appropriate permissions (like Project Owner or Backup Manager) to make these changes.
Impact: Disabling PITR will mean you can no longer restore your cluster to arbitrary points in time — you’ll only be able to restore from snapshot backups.
If you’re unable to disable PITR through the UI, check if a compliance policy is active, or contact MongoDB support for assistance.
Has anyone here dealt with this before? Is there a way to disable PITR without going through MongoDB support, or is upgrading the support plan the only path?
Steps to Disable PITR (if allowed):
Important Notes: