Author: Amanda Jennewein
Date: July 2, 2025
Audience: Jama Connect Cloud-hosted Customers
Summary
The ability to back up and restore tenant data is essential to Jama Connect operations and is fully supported by the Jama Connect Cloud architecture. This document describes how tenants are backed up in the Jama Connect Cloud, where the data is stored, and how long it’s stored.
What is a tenant?
A tenant in the Jama Connect Cloud platform is similar to a tenant who rents an apartment in a multi-unit building. A tenant renting an apartment might expect that their apartment includes a locking door, a mailbox, electricity, and running water. Just as an apartment building provides services to its tenants, Jama Connect Cloud provides the necessary services to its tenants, ensuring each tenant has access to a Jama Connect application. Each tenant must have access to services, a database, and a file system, all of which are provided by a regional host called the Bulkhead.
A tenant’s data includes:
- Tenant metadata — Tenant name, ID, public URL, Jama Connect application version, service versions
- Tenant database — Jama Connect users and content created by Jama Connect users
- Tenant file system — Assets (avatars, attachments, diagrams, equations, reports) uploaded or created by Jama Connect users
What is a bulkhead?
A Bulkhead is a region-specific host for tenants. To use the apartment analogy, a Bulkhead is an apartment building that’s located near where a tenant wants to live. The Bulkhead provides all the resources that a tenant needs, including access to the Jama Connect application, services, database schema, and file system. These resources are shared with all tenants in the Bulkhead.
Which tenant data is backed up?
While all the tenant data is backed up, only the database and assets are needed to restore a tenant in a Bulkhead.
How is the tenant data backed up?
Tenant Database
An automated process that uses mysqldump to create a backup for each tenant database in the Bulkhead. To learn about the database backup program: MySQL 8.0 Reference Manual 6.5.4 mysqldump — A Database Backup Program
We have an additional automated process that utilizes MySQL Enterprise Backup to take full backups of the database’s file storage for use in disaster recovery scenarios. To learn about MySQL Enterprise Backup: MySQL Enterprise Backup 8.0 User's Guide
Tenant Assets
An automated process that uses Duplicity to create and incrementally update backup chains of assets for each tenant in the Bulkhead. To learn about Duplicity: duplicity_Encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup.
Where is the tenant backup stored?
Tenant data is backed up to an AWS S3 Bucket that exists in the same AWS Region as the Bulkhead where the tenant resides. The data backed up to these AWS S3 Buckets is available in at least three AWS Availability Zones within the AWS Region.
The contents of the AWS S3 Buckets that contain the tenant data are backed up to an AWS S3 Bucket in a different region. Learn about Amazon S3.
Tenant Database
EU Bulkheads
- S3 Bucket Region: eu-west-1
- S3 Bucket Replication Region: eu-central-1
US Bulkheads
- S3 Bucket Region: us-west-2
- S3 Bucket Replication Region: us-east-2
Tenant Assets
EU Bulkheads
- S3 Bucket Region: eu-west-1
- S3 Bucket Replication Region: eu-central-1
US Bulkheads
- S3 Bucket Region: us-east-1
- S3 Bucket Replication Region: us-east-2
Are the tenant database and asset backups encrypted?
Yes, the AWS S3 Bucket where the data resides is encrypted, at rest, using AES-256 server-side encryption with Amazon S3-Managed Encryption Keys (SSE-S3). For details: 
Who has access to the data?
Access to the AWS S3 Buckets containing production tenant data is restricted to authorized Jama Connect personnel and the tools responsible for managing tenant data backups.
When are the tenants backed up?
Tenant Database
Tenant-specific backups: Daily. The time the database backup begins will vary.
Full database backups Are Performed Daily, starting at noon UDT, with additional incremental backups taken every 30 minutes.
Tenant Assets
Daily after 3:00 UTC. The time the backup begins will vary.
Why does the start time vary for daily tenant-specific backups?
Tenant Database
The database backup service in the Bulkhead is responsible for creating a daily database backup for every tenant in the Bulkhead. Backing up a tenant’s database can put a load on the database server that all tenants share in the Bulkhead. By distributing the time when backups are created, the load doesn’t impact performance for other tenants.
Tenant Assets
Unlike tenant database backups, the full backups of tenant assets are executed once every 14 days. Once the Duplicity backup chain has been established, the backup process needs to create only files containing the differences between the full Duplicity backup and the current state of the tenant file system. The backup process continues to create daily incremental backups until the 14 days is up, and it’s time to create another full Duplicity backup. While backups begin at 3:00 UTC daily, the time when the backup of assets for a specific tenant starts depends on several factors, including whether Duplicity is creating a full or incremental backup.
How long are the tenant database and assets backups retained in S3?
No longer than 60 days in compliance with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
How are the tenant database and assets backups deleted from S3?
The S3 buckets have been configured to automatically delete any backups after the 60-day maximum retention period.
What happens to a tenant's data when their license expires?
An automated process deletes a tenant's data from the database server and deletes assets from the file system 60 days after a tenant's license has expired. Daily backups stored in S3 buckets are automatically deleted each day for the next 60 days until no backups remain.
Additional Resources
- Success Programs
- Success Catalog
- Datasheets
- Request a Solution Offering or Training from the Success Catalog
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