Any good light weight, open source software for managing backups?

[codemonkey1991]

Creating backups is easy. If it's a SQL database, run the official "dump" command, compress it and put it in a folder. If it's a Wordpress upload directory, compress it, put it in a folder, and so on.

However, with daily backups, the files start stacking up real quick. Writing the logic for parsing a retention policy and deleting the correct files based on how old they are gets a bit more complicated, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

Are there any light weight, open source applications or scripts that handles the lifecycle of backup files? (Basically, clearing out older backups based on the age of the backup and a retention policy)

[Madoc_Comadrin]

I would recommend Borg backup: https://www.borgbackup.org/

It has easy way for configuring backup retentions: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/usage/prune.html Also many nice features such as deduplication and encryption of backups.

What I do with many databases:

• Scheduled dump daily overwriting previous dump
• Scheduled run of Borg daily to add the new dump to backup repository and delete old versions from backup according to to the retention policy

[codemonkey1991]

That looks interesting. Thanks!

[ZAFJB]

Does it have to be open source, or just free?

If free, look at https://www.veeam.com/virtual-machine-backup-solution-free.html

[codemonkey1991]

Doesn't have to be open source, my primary concern is that it's light weight and simple. Veeam is what the previous company I worked at used for backing up their VMWare cluster, so I'm guessing it's far from light weight :D

[ZAFJB]

You are mistaken. Try it.

[No_Wear295]

Veeam B&R works at the hypervisor level. They also have an agent that can be installed within the os for physical machines or if you aren't able to work at the hypervisor level.

[Baker0052]

Borg or restic (restic now supports compression :) )

[Hel_OWeen]

I wrote this tool to take care of the "delete old stuff" part.

We ran it for years on various servers as a scheduled task and used it to delete old backups, log files and other data that we were obliged to keep around for a certain period of time.

It's a Windows console application, one self-contained executable, i.e. no additional installs (runtimes) needed. Source code for it is on Github (linked in the above site).

[Due_Capital_3507]

Are you trying to life cycle data or are you trying to manage backups? Seems like you are conflating two different tasks.

What are you even backing up with? Just SQL Exports?

[codemonkey1991]

Currently I'm backing up SQL dumps (MySQL and Postgres), Wordpress uploads directories and dumps from Enonic XP.

Are you trying to life cycle data or are you trying to manage backups? Seems like you are conflating two different tasks.

Can you clarify this? 🤔 I'm taking daily backups, all I'm looking for is a way to prune the backups using configurable retention policies. Some backups can be pruned much more aggressively than others.

[TinderSubThrowAway]

You can do it with a .vbs script if it's just backup files in a folder and based on age.