In this talk, we delve into Wells Fargo's approach for backing up and synchronizing Apache Iceberg tables across environments using Project Nessie as a catalog-level control plane. By combining object storage replication with Nessie’s Git-like metadata versioning, we demonstrate how production Iceberg tables can be continuously mirrored into non-production catalogs.

The architecture consists of two coordinated replication layers:
1. Storage-Layer Replication
All Iceberg table data such as Parquet files, manifests, and metadata JSON is replicated from production S3 into non-production S3 using standard enterprise tooling (rclone, distcp, or object-store replication).
2. Catalog-Layer Replication with Nessie
Production Nessie stores authoritative Iceberg metadata
Non-production Nessie runs as a separate instance
Nessie’s MongoDB collections (objs2, refs2) are periodically synchronized across environments

Once completed, the non-production Nessie catalog becomes a true mirror of production.