pgBackRest

Nik and Michael are joined by David Steele to talk all things pgBackRest.

Here are some links to things they mentioned:

David Steele https://postgres.fm/people/david-steelepgBackRest https://pgbackrest.orgpg_basebackup https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgbasebackup.htmlBarman https://pgbarman.orgpgmoneta https://github.com/pgmoneta/pgmonetaWAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-gReturn pg_control from pg_backup_stop (patch proposal) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/86436ff9-eb98-4c8a-825e-3bcae022107b%40pgbackrest.org#e36e2ad2f410d1a9a1152e36aa66bb48Add StorageReadMulti for prefetched multi-file/range reads from object stores (pgBackRest change that needs review) https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrest/pull/2783pg_hardstorage https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/pg_hardstorageWhy the cycle of open-source sustainability needs to be virtuous (blog post by Gabriele Bartolini) https://www.gabrielebartolini.it/articles/2026/04/why-the-cycle-of-open-source-sustainability-needs-to-be-virtuousARIN https://www.arin.netStefan Fercot https://pgstef.github.io/aboutpgBackRest sponsors at the time of recording: AWS, Supabase, pgEdge, Tiger Data, Percona, Eon, Xata, Dalibo, Data Egret

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00:00 – Intro & pgBackRest origin story

03:07 – Could pgBackRest live in Postgres core? Why it hasn't happened

11:37 – Primary vs. standby backups & corruption safety

20:36 – Measuring RPO & RTO in practice

26:20 – Checksum performance & S3 storage class tips

30:02 – Standby replay bottleneck

35:12 – Log shipping, streaming replication, and sharding

44:56 – Maintenance reality & the sponsorship crisis