# PBM - Backup only required shards

**URL:** https://forums.percona.com/t/pbm-backup-only-required-shards/10268
**Category:** Percona Backup for MongoDB
**Tags:** community, mongodb
**Created:** [April 27, 2021, 7:15pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/pbm-backup-only-required-shards/10268 "2021-04-27T19:15:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![ilanchezhianm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f8ce5/32.png) [@ilanchezhianm](https://forums.percona.com/u/ilanchezhianm)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2021, 7:15pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/pbm-backup-only-required-shards/10268/1 "2021-04-27T19:15:31Z")

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Hello - We are exploring options to configure pbm for mongodb sharded cluster. It works nicely. Wanted to check if pbm has a feature to limit backup only required shards ?

Meaning out of 20 shards I want to backup from only few shards. Read through the document could not find details around it thoughts on this will be helpful. Thank you.

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### Author: ![jenunes](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/jenunes/32/9331_2.png) [@jenunes](https://forums.percona.com/u/jenunes)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2021, 11:31pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/pbm-backup-only-required-shards/10268/2 "2021-06-03T23:31:17Z")

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Hi @ilanchezhianm

That’s not possible; The problem with this approach is that will create backup pieces with different moment-in-time over the cluster.  
And these backups will be invalid on a restore procedure as the data must have been changed on shards between backups.

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### Author: ![ilanchezhianm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f8ce5/32.png) [@ilanchezhianm](https://forums.percona.com/u/ilanchezhianm)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2021, 2:44pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/pbm-backup-only-required-shards/10268/3 "2021-06-07T14:44:43Z")

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Thank you @jenunes for confirming.