A No-Nonsense Guide to Database Backups

Backups are one of those things you set up once, forget about, and pray work the day you need them. Here\'s the minimum every production app should have.

Daily off-site copies

Your backup is only useful if it lives somewhere your production server can\'t accidentally delete. Push it to S3, Backblaze or any object store with versioning.

Test the restore

An untested backup is a bedtime story. Once a quarter, restore your latest backup into a fresh database and run your test suite against it.

Encrypt at rest

Backups contain customer data. Encrypt them with a key your hosting provider doesn\'t hold.