Hot physical backups with Barman
The main motivation to start a new open source project for disaster recovery of PostgreSQL databases was the lack (back in 2011) of a simple and standard procedure for managing backups and, most importantly, recovery. Disasters and failures in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will happen.
As a database administrator, your duty is to plan for backups and the recovery of PostgreSQL databases and perform regular tests in order to sweep away stress and fear, which typically follow those unexpected events. Barman, which stands for Backup and Recovery Manager, is definitely a tool that you can use for these purposes.
Barman hides most of the complexity of working with PostgreSQL backups. For more information on the underlying technologies, you can refer to other recipes in this chapter: Understanding and controlling crash recovery, Planning backups, and Recovery to a point in time. It is important to be aware of how Barman works underneath...