# Accidents Happen. What If Your Postgres Database Could Recover Instantly?

DevFeed: [Accidents Happen. What If Your Postgres Database Could Recover Instantly?](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/accidents-happen-what-if-your-postgres-database-could-recover-instantly-5708.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://neon.com/blog/outage-simulator>)

Author: Carlota Soto

Published: 2025-03-10T19:42:16Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Blog -- Neon Docs](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blog-neon-docs.md>)

Topics: [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>), [web applications](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web-applications.md>), [Amazon RDS](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/amazon-rds.md>), [cloud-infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-infrastructure.md>), [Demo](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/demo.md>), [simulator](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/simulator.md>)

Tags: [amazon](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/amazon.md>), [amazon-rds](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/amazon-rds.md>), [backups](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/backups.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [outage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/outage.md>), [postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgres.md>), [product](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/product.md>), [production](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/production.md>), [recovery](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/recovery.md>), [scale](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scale.md>), [simulator](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/simulator.md>), [snapshots](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/snapshots.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>), [stress](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/stress.md>), [web-app](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web-app.md>)

## AI overview

This article presents an Outage Simulator demonstrating Neon's Instant Restore for Postgres databases. A social media web app loads data from Neon, simulates a database failure, and restores service in less than a second by creating a branch from the point in time before the failure. The article explains that Neon's copy-on-write branching and shared storage avoid copying the full database, enabling fast recovery even for multi-terabyte databases, unlike traditional backup-based restores and services such as Amazon RDS.

## Source excerpt

We all have experienced what happens when a production database goes down--it's not fun. No matter the cause, the result is always the same--high stress, downtime, and a rush to restore everything as quickly as possible. How long would it take to get your Postgres database back onl...