Barman – Backup and Recovery Manager for PostgreSQL(github.com)

157 pointsby nateb20224 days ago5 comments

ninjaoxygen17 hours ago
We use Barman inside Kubernetes via CloudNativePG's plugin, as it is the default backup plugin.
Barman has always been solid for backup and restore, however configuring backup in CNPG is a little more interesting - WAL limits need to be set carefully or you just end up filling WAL volumes and the database becoming unavailable.
- Synthetic734614 hours ago
  Can the plugin do non objectstore backups? E.g. If I don't want to use S3 / minio / whatever blobstore for my homelab
  - mkroman13 hours ago
    The plugin is specifically for handling backups via object storage.
    CloudNativePG also implements support for volume snapshots: https://cloudnative-pg.io/docs/1.29/backup#backup-methods
- subhobroto17 hours ago
  > We use Barman inside Kubernetes via CloudNativePG's plugin, as it is the default backup plugin.
  right and here's why CloudNativePG chose Barman over pgBackRest: https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/cloudnative-pg/issues/3077
  > WAL limits need to be set carefully or you just end up filling WAL volumes and the database becoming unavailable.
  This is true. For anyone getting alarmed that this is due to a bug in PostgreSQL, it's not - it's PostgreSQL protecting the customer from attempting to write data that it cannot durable commit - "I am going to go unavailable because I don't have enough space to save more data".
  There are multiple ways to handle this, the easiest, most hands on way is to keep a monitor and alert that watches the WAL size like a hawk and then alerts OPS the moment it breaches a threshold.
  - Tostino16 hours ago
    I thought that link was actually going to have a discussion on why they chose it. No such discussion exists.
    subhobroto16 hours ago
    The way I read that issue and the linked discussion was, that pgBackRest handles a lot of details itself that's otherwise handled by Kubernetes. Hence, a lot of functionality in pgBackRest is not only redundant but incompatible with how Kubernetes CSI could be used to provide incremental and differential backups. Hence, Barman and `barman-cloud` plugins are a better, natural fit for a Kubernetes environment than pgBackRest.
levkk17 hours ago
Last time I checked, Barman didn't support backups to S3. That's why (for us) pgBackRest was such a big deal: it could offload full and incremental backups to a basically limitless and reliable medium.
I think (and I'm probably wrong now) that Barman only could push backups to another Linux machine (e.g., EC2 box), so you had to worry about your backup system _on top_ of the main DB.
So I'm really hoping someone will pickup maintaining pgBackRest.
- bakies15 hours ago
  Huh... Opposite experience. Barman cloud (s3 backups) is the only way I've ever used it. I didn't realize it wasn't the only way. Makes sense it could just use a filesystem.
  https://docs.pgbarman.org/release/3.14.1/user_guide/barman_c...
- hakube16 hours ago
  They have a plugin that supports backups to cloud storage
  https://docs.pgbarman.org/release/3.12.0/user_guide/barman_c...
  For CNPG: https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/plugin-barman-cloud
- hephaes7us17 hours ago
  Something like Rclone and a cron job, or else s3 mounted via FUSE, could possibly bridge that. Of course then you have to worry about reliability of the bridge...
  - the_angry_angel16 hours ago
    There’s support via Barman cloud - we use it for azure at work but s3 and others are supported iirc
  - timacles15 hours ago
    Mounting S3 with Fuse is not stable or performant enough at scale for backup storage
    hephaes7us14 hours ago
    I can understand why it'd be preferable to avoid such a bridge layer, and indeed I too would rather just have a transparent view of what's going on at the protocol level.
    Stability and performance at scale sound like implementation specific properties though. If you've tried this, I'd be curious to known about the specific issues you encountered.
  - Eikon15 hours ago
    https://github.com/Barre/ZeroFS Should do a great job at this.
- somewhatrandom916 hours ago
  There are other ways to mount S3, but you may want to check out Amazon's new product, S3 files: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2026/04/amazon-s3...
  https://aws.amazon.com/s3/features/files/
philippemnoel15 hours ago
We (ParadeDB) use Barman via CloudNativePG for almost all our deployments. It's been solid, although I've had a few complaints about 1) inability to set S3 storage classes, 2) slow upload for very large databases.
Nonetheless, very happy to see this project on the front page of HN!
subhobroto18 hours ago
This is a fantastic project that a lot of self-hosters using PostgreSQL use. Specially with pgBackRest archived by the owner on Apr 27, 2026, this is likely the leading option that has been around the block for a while.
Anyone here had considered Barman in the past, used it for a while and went to pgBackRest? Are you revisiting that decision now?
- hans_castorp18 hours ago
  A side note on pgBackRest: PGX created a fork and announced to maintain it under the name pgxbackup:
  https://thebuild.com/blog/2026/05/01/pgxbackup-continuity-su...
- zigzag31217 hours ago
  One interesting thing about Barman is that it just uses PG's own backup utilities. It doesn't implement custom parsers and things like that. So, there's less maintenance work needed for Barman when PostgreSQL changes data-file internals. Tradeoff is that there's less custom optimization than pgBackRest/pg_probackup/WAL-G-local.
  Databasus seems to be taking somewhat similar approach to Barman, but (at this time) does not appear to use pg_receivewal, which makes it less efficient than Barman.
  For PG v17+, Barman seems to be the most efficient backup solution based on PG native tools, that is able to do low-RPO or even zero-RPO (if configured as a synchronous receiver).
- tee-es-gee17 hours ago
  It looks like pgBackRest will likely continue, multiple companies are stepping up with sponsorships. Mentioning this just in case anyone is making plans to move away, it's probably worth waiting a bit for things to settle.
nodesocket16 hours ago
A shout out to Databasus (https://databasus.com). It’s a remarkably simply utility and web interface to schedule PostgreSQL backups. I use it in my homelab and works great.
- blazarquasar9 hours ago
  Its fine for HomeLab use, but its not really an alternative to something like barman. Quite heavy and vibe-coded.
- cpursley13 hours ago
  Upvote, this is working well for us.