Backups, restore, filestore and neutralising copies

Backup strategy, what to back up, testing restores, the database manager, neutralising copies and disaster recovery.

In this lesson

What to back up and how often
Restoring for real
Neutralised copies and disaster recovery

Key points

DB (pg_dump or PITR) + filestore + config + Git + secrets vault
3-2-1 rule; retention to policy
Restore test: open an attachment to prove the filestore
odoo-bin neutralize; RTO/RPO; rehearsed runbook

Real-world example

A ransomware attack encrypted a client's on-premise server. Off-site backups existed, but nobody had tested them: the filestore copies were empty because the path changed a year earlier. Since then the consultant's monthly restore test opens five random attachments and records the time taken.

Questions and answers

What is RPO?

Recovery point objective: maximum acceptable data loss measured in time.

Why disable the database manager in production?

It allows backup/restore/drop with the master password; reduce attack surface.

Read the full lesson, worked example and quiz