Barman – Backup and Recovery Manager for PostgreSQL
github.com

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163 points

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nateb2022

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4 days ago

23 comments

ninjaoxygen ・ 18 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.

  • subhobroto ・ 18 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.

    • Tostino ・ 17 hours ago

      I thought that link was actually going to have a discussion on why they chose it. No such discussion exists.

      • subhobroto ・ 17 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.

levkk ・ 18 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.

philippemnoel ・ 16 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!

subhobroto ・ 19 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?

  • zigzag312 ・ 18 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-gee ・ 18 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.

nodesocket ・ 17 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.

  • blazarquasar ・ 10 hours ago

    Its fine for HomeLab use, but its not really an alternative to something like barman. Quite heavy and vibe-coded.

  • cpursley ・ 14 hours ago

    Upvote, this is working well for us.