Restore snapshots on s3 back to atlas cluster
Currently we store Atlas snapshots on S3 for D.R purposes as well as for compliance reasons.
There was a scenario where an instance was deleted by mistake, and once an instance is deleted all of the atlas managed backup snapshots were gone. In order to restore the Atlas instance we had to do the following:
1) create a new atlas instance
2) restore the snapshot from s3 to a temporary mongodb database and then do a dump and restore in order to migrate the data back into the new atlas instance.
This is a time-consuming process, so if there is the ability to copy the snapshots directly back to the atlas instance that will save some time.
In addition, this also can benefit a scenario where we archive/purge data on a periodic basis and if needing to restore the data back for compliance reasons we can restore the snapshot, stored in S3, taken before the purge/archive process to another Atlas instance. (with the understanding that the mongo snapshot versions are the same as what is being offered in atlas).

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Hi, thanks for the comments. A few things, first the intention of this feature is for long-term archival to meet a compliance requirement. In the near future, we will release something new to archive DR all contained in Atlas.
Secondly regarding restoring from these archives. There are two other ways you could do this. The first is to use Atlas Data Lake to query the archive directly or secondly follow the instructions here --> https://docs.atlas.mongodb.com/backup/cloud-backup/import-archive/
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Sam commented
Yes please - why give the facilities to export to S3 when there is no converse option to restore a cluster's from a snapshot on S3?
We pay for a service to host our MongoDB clusters so we don't have to host own own anymore - it is counterintuitive that we have to make clusters to restore data to clusters on a hosted service.