Installing and configuring Barman

Though PostgreSQL provides a very capable tool in pg_basebackup, it's not really a complete backup management system. Barman is a Backup and Recovery Manager developed by 2ndQuadrant to remedy that situation.

Unlike included utilities, Barman can receive WAL archives, produce and restore database backups, list available backups, control backup retention policies, and more. With a single command, we can manage backups of any PostgreSQL server we've configured Barman to recognize. Further, we can accomplish this from the backup server itself and not need to perform any local post-installation tasks on any PostgreSQL servers.

However, before we can get any of these abilities, we must first install and configure Barman. This recipe will walk you through this process as simply as possible.

Getting ready

At the time of writing this book, the most recent version of Barman is 1.3.0. Because of 2ndQuadrant's close interaction with the PostgreSQL community, it is available...