XCOPY cross-region replication

Compliance statement for cross-border data transmission

If you use XCOPY for cross-border data transmission, you must comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the relevant regions.

Features

The cross-region replication (XCOPY) feature supports incremental replication of table snapshots. It is ideal for scenarios such as cross-region data backup, migration, and sharing.

• It uses file-level incremental replication to copy column-compressed binary data files, which provides a balance of transfer efficiency, cost reduction, and data consistency.

• Replication is based on table snapshots. The replicated data is decoupled from the source table, allowing you to manage the backup lifecycle independently.

• Table snapshot replicas provide a well-defined point for Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR), which enables you to restore recently lost data from the upstream data source.

• Incremental replication is performed at the partition level. When replicating between two snapshots of the same table, only differential partitions are copied. Duplicate partitions are automatically skipped to avoid redundant replication.

• Billing: For more information, see Cross-region data replication fees.

Scope and limits

• Supported regions: China (Hong Kong), Singapore, and Japan (Tokyo).

• Cross-region bandwidth: The initial bandwidth is 10 Gbps and can be adjusted as needed.

• Target object: table snapshot.

  Table snapshots are supported for standard tables (including partitioned, non-partitioned, and clustered tables) and PK/Append Delta tables. They are not supported for transactional tables.

• XCOPY task limit:

  A maximum of 128 XCOPY snapshot tasks can run concurrently within a single project. Subsequent task submissions will fail if this limit is exceeded.

• Permission requirements:

  • The source project and the destination project must belong to the same primary account.

  • You must have SELECT permission on the source table snapshot in the source project.

  • You must have CREATE TABLE permission in the destination project.

Enable XCOPY

XCOPY command reference

XCOPY SNAPSHOT <src_remote_project_name>.<src_remote_snapshot_name>
TO SNAPSHOT [<dest_local_project_name>.]<dest_local_snapshot_name> 
OPTIONS(src_region=<region_name>); 

Examples

This example shows a disaster recovery backup from a primary region in Singapore (SGP) to a backup region in China (Hong Kong) (HK), as shown in the following figure:

• Backup phase

  Primary region (Singapore): In Project_A under Account A (User1), you create snapshots SNAPSHOT_X1/X2 and SNAPSHOT_Y1 for the source tables Table_X and Table_Y, respectively.

  -- Backup phase
  -- A user creates a snapshot in the Singapore region (Region-SGP).
  CREATE SNAPSHOT TABLE
  Project_A.table_x_snapshot_20260101
  CLONE Project_A.table_x; 

• Cross-region replication phase

  XCOPY replicates the snapshot data from the primary region to the backup region over a dedicated cross-region, cross-border connection.

  -- A user copies the snapshot created in Region-SGP to the China (Hong Kong) region (Region-HK).
  XCOPY
  SNAPSHOT Project_A.table_x_snapshot_20260101
  TO
  SNAPSHOT Project_B.table_x_snapshot_20260101
  OPTIONS( src_region =” ap-southeast-1”);

• Recovery phase

  Backup region (China (Hong Kong)): Project_B receives the replicated snapshot. You can then restore the snapshot to a target table, such as Table_Z.

  -- Recovery phase
  -- A user runs temporary queries on the backup data in Region-HK.
  SELECT * FROM Project_B.table_x_snapshot_20260101;
  
  -- A user restores data in Region-HK.
  CREATE TABLE table_x CLONE table_x_snapshot_20260101;