Database Backups and Disaster Recovery
Learn backup strategies, point-in-time recovery, and how to test your restores so you're prepared when disaster strikes.
13 min readdatabases, postgres, backups, disaster-recovery, operations
Here's an uncomfortable truth: your database will fail. Maybe it's hardware. Maybe it's a bad migration. Maybe someone runs DELETE FROM users without a WHERE clause. The question isn't whether you'll need to recover — it's whether you'll be able to.
Backups are the most important operational practice you can have, and they're the one most commonly neglected until it's too late.
The Golden Rules of Backups
Before diving into specifics, internalize these principles:
- A backup that hasn't been tested is not a backup. It's a hope.
- Your backup strategy should match your tolerance for data loss. Can you lose 5 minutes of data? 1 hour? 24 hours? This determines your approach.
- Backups must be stored separately from the database. A backup on the same server as the data
This lesson is part of the Guild Member curriculum. Plans start at $29/mo.