PostgreSQL Backups: Why Successful Backups Still Fail

This video focuses on PostgreSQL backup and restore in production systems.

PostgreSQL backups are easy… until you actually need to restore one.

In this video, I walk through how PostgreSQL backup management really works in production — from WAL and incremental backups to failure scenarios engineers often discover too late.

This isn’t a tool-heavy tutorial.
It’s about building the right mental model so you can answer questions like:

Are my backups actually usable?
What happens if WAL archiving silently breaks?
Why do “successful backups” still fail during restore?

If you run self-managed PostgreSQL in production (or plan to), this video might save your time.

🔗 Resources
WAL-G (Online PostgreSQL Backups): https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g
Example configs & setup: https://github.com/anasanjaria/postgr...
How to monitor PostgreSQL via custom queries?    • PostgreSQL Monitoring Made Easy | Custom Q...  
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⌚️ Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction & agenda
1:28 Dump-based backups vs Online backups
2:43 What are Online backups in PostgreSQL?
3:05 Replication vs Backups — what’s the difference?
5:29 How Online backups actually work
7:25 What is WAL (Write-Ahead Logging)?
8:10 Why WAL is critical for backups
8:40 What does a “consistent backup” really mean?
10:44 Backup timeline: Base backup + continuous WAL
11:56 WAL-G: Tooling for Online backups
12:24 Real-world example: Spilo configuration
14:39 What happens when backups fail?
16:07 How to monitor WAL archiving in PostgreSQL


#PostgreSQL #DatabaseBackups #WAL #BackendEngineering #DevOps