How to create and list backups

This guide contains recommended steps and useful commands for creating and managing backups to ensure smooth restores.

Prerequisites

• A cluster with at least three nodes deployed
• Access to S3 storage
• Configured settings for S3 storage

Summary

• Save your current cluster credentials, as you’ll need them for restoring
• Create a backup
• List backups to check the availability and status of your backups

Save your current cluster credentials

You can retrieve them with:

juju run postgresql/leader get-password username=operator
juju run postgresql/leader get-password username=replication
juju run postgresql/leader get-password username=rewind

For more context about passwords during a restore, check How to migrate a cluster > Manage cluster passwords.

Create a backup

Once Charmed PostgreSQL is active and idle, you can create your first backup with the create-backup command:

juju run postgresql/leader create-backup

By default, backups created with the command above will be full backups: a copy of all your data will be stored in S3. There are 2 other supported types of backups (available in revision 416+):

• Differential: Only modified files since the last full backup will be stored.
• Incremental: Only modified files since the last successful backup (of any type) will be stored.

To specify the desired backup type, use the type parameter:

juju run postgresql/leader create-backup type={full|differential|incremental}

Tip: To avoid unnecessary service downtime, always use non-primary units for the action create-backup. Keep in mind that:

• When TLS is enabled, create-backup can only run on replicas (non-primary)
• When TLS is not enabled, create-backup can only run in the primary unit

List backups

juju run postgresql/leader list-backups