Backups

Postgres has two mechanisms for backups:

• Logical backups contain the raw data as a set of SQL statements such as CREATE table and INSERTs.
• Physical backups are a byte for byte backup of the data on disk. These are included with Crunchy Bridge.

Read more about the difference between and logical and physical backups here.

Logical backups

Crunchy Bridge does not automatically capture logical backups, but you can capture your own logical backups at any time using pg_dump.

Physical backups

Physical backups are included with Crunchy Bridge clusters automatically at no extra charge. For each cluster, a PostgreSQL base backup is captured each day and kept current by streaming the WAL every 60 seconds or 16MB (whichever comes first). A physical backup can be restored as a fork.

Backups are retained for a rolling 10-day period as long as your cluster is running. If you suspend a cluster, the most recent 10 days of backups will be retained along with the data on disk. If you destroy a cluster, all backups will also be destroyed after 5 days.

If you require a longer retention time, you can use the fork feature to create individual backup snapshots. Contact support if you'd like to discuss additional considerations with backups.

Accessing your backups

Information about the backups Crunchy Bridge is storing for a cluster can be found under the Backups tab.

You can also view and copy credentials to access the backup files directly. This can be useful for retrieving and storing backups beyond the 10-day window provided by Crunchy Bridge.

For more details about downloading and working with your backup files, see Downloading backups and Restoring backups.

Forking from backup

You can create a new fork from any of the physical backups stored for your cluster by clicking "Fork from Backup". A new cluster will be created according to the options you specify and populated with the data from the backup.

Starting a manual backup

If you'd like to trigger a manual backup, you can do so from the Backups tab.

Using the CLI or API for backups

Both the CLI and API have capabilities for managing backups and all the features described above.