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

@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:

1. pg_dump
2. (optional) Encrypt the file.
3. 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.