To safeguard the database in the production environment and ensure its availability in the case of failures or disasters, a comprehensive backup strategy for PostgreSQL in production must be established. This plan should include secure storage, encryption, off-site backups, and periodic, automated backup processes to ensure data integrity and reliability.

Planning for a backup:

In addition to collaborating with other teams to create disaster recovery plans, the DBA is in the shoes of creating an adequate backup strategy that complies with the organization’s data security demands and needs.

Plan a backup schedule

• Maintaining a recent database backup requires the creation of a backup schedule.
• Recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) determine how frequently backups should be performed.
• RPO establishes the quantity of data to be lost after an interruption, whereas RTO establishes the recovery time or maximum database downtime.
• Hourly, continuous, and daily backups are examples of common backup schedules.
• Continuous backups require additional resources since they create a backup of the transaction log through continuous archiving.
• The backup strategy may differ depending on the organization’s specific RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) requirements.

 

Types of backup in postgresql

Addressing the two main types of backups—logical and physical—is essential when creating a backup plan. The tools we utilize depend on the unique qualities of each category.

Logical Backups

• Can store data in a human-readable format (e.g., SQL scripts).
• Allow fine-grained recovery (e.g., restoring a single table).
• Slower for full restores because the database must reprocess all SQL commands.
• Best for small databases, schema migrations, or partial recoveries.

Physical Backups

• Copy database files directly from disk (binary format).
• Much faster for full restores—speed depends only on disk/network performance.
• Require consistency (e.g., using pg_basebackup or WAL archiving to avoid corruption).
• Ideal for large databases and point-in-time recovery (PITR).

Options for backup in postgresql

PostgreSQL offers a number of options for automated operation and backups in the required formats. It is the most robust and reliable open source database, and we have the option to use the operating system-level backup options or the built-in tool. We may also use some of the most dependable technologies available on the market to take advantage of block level backups.

Integrated Choices:

The two initiatives that come with PostgreSQL serve as a base for the integrated choices.

• pgdump / pgdumpall (logical)
• Pg_basebackup (physical)

In addition to Choices:

There are various third party softwares provide options for taking the full or incremental backups

• The data directory’s physical backup using operating system commands like tar
• backup of the drive containing the data directory at filesystem level snapshots
• PGBackrest
• Barman
• WAL-G

 

In our upcoming blog, we will discuss ways to effectively implement these backup strategies in a production environment.