Production database backups

Production database is backed-up by AWS with two of their services:

1. AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) snapshots and backups
2. AWS Backup.

Additional backups are:

1. created before starting any deployment starts
2. automatically run via a cronjob on the server.

Backup system

Both services back the database by creating snapshots. They are incremental and allow to restore the database as a complete service. So it doesn't matter which PostgreSQL database is restored, it will be the whole server as a new instance.

AWS Relational Database Service (RDS)

The database is set up to have a daily snapshot around 7 AM UTC. The rentention period is 35 days, and older snapshots are deleted.

AWS Backup

This is an additional backup service. It also makes daily snapshots of the database, and they also have a rentention of 35 days. The difference is in longer time period. After 35 days, AWS Backup keeps one snapshot per month.

Deployment backups

Additional backups are created before starting any deployment with pg_dump. They are stored locally on the server.

A good practice is to create a manual snapshot in AWS console before starting a deployment. Manual snapshots are not deleted automatically.

Automatic backup from inside of the server

A script is set up to run every 30 minutes and upload a pg_dump of the database to S3.