Question

Can managed databases be backed up outside of Digital Ocean without a third-party?

Posted on September 15, 2020
Databases Backups
Asked by ashconnor

I spun up a Postgres managed database which auto-created a backup. I noticed that this backup didn’t have any export options only restore.

Is it possible to back this up to another cloud provider?

I saw this provider can accomplish what I am asking but I was just wondering whether this is via some API or they are connecting to the DB over the internet and backup up that way.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tools/simplebackups-digitalocean-server-database-backups

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Andy Hattemer

DigitalOcean Employee

• September 15, 2020

Accepted Answer

@ashconnor Good question.

Unfortunately, you cannot export managed database backups via the control panel or API. So all automated solutions for backing up your managed database to a different cloud will require a connection to the DB over the internet.

Despite that limitation, I think you could run a scheduled job from a DigitalOcean Droplet that does something like this at a set interval:

pg_dump
(optional) Encrypt the file.
Upload the file to S3

These instructions for exporting a postgresql database apply equally well for our postgres db’s.

Security considerations:

Create a VPC and add or migrate the Droplet and Managed Database to it.
Use the private network connection params to run the pg_dump from the Droplet, this means all the database export network traffic will stay firewalled within your VPC within our datacenters.
Encrypt the output: before leaving the safety of your VPC and uploading to S3, you can encrypt the file.

Cost-savings considerations:

pg_dump has a --compress or -Z argument that will gzip the file, (or you could just compress it after pg_dump.) Either way that will probably help you save your bandwidth budget and storage costs wherever you send the file.