docker-postgres-s3-backup

This project provides Docker images to periodically back up a PostgreSQL database to AWS S3, and to restore from the backup as needed. It is forked from docker-postgres-backup-s3 and updated to support the latest PostgreSQL versions.

Usage

Backup

services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:16
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: user
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password

  backup:
    image: eeshugerman/postgres-backup-s3:16
    environment:
      SCHEDULE: '@weekly'     # optional
      BACKUP_KEEP_DAYS: 7     # optional
      PASSPHRASE: passphrase  # optional
      S3_REGION: region
      S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID: key
      S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: secret
      S3_BUCKET: my-bucket
      S3_PREFIX: backup
      POSTGRES_HOST: postgres
      POSTGRES_DATABASE: dbname
      POSTGRES_USER: user
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password

• Images are tagged by the major PostgreSQL version supported: 12, 13, 14, 15 or 16.
• The SCHEDULE variable determines backup frequency. See go-cron schedules documentation here. Omit to run the backup immediately and then exit.
• If PASSPHRASE is provided, the backup will be encrypted using GPG.
• Run docker exec <container_name> sh backup.sh to trigger a backup ad-hoc.
• If BACKUP_KEEP_DAYS is set, backups older than this many days will be deleted from S3.
• Set S3_ENDPOINT if you're using a non-AWS S3-compatible storage provider.

Restore

Caution

DATA LOSS! All database objects will be dropped and re-created.

... from latest backup

docker exec <container_name> sh restore.sh

Note

If your bucket has more than a 1000 files, the latest may not be restored -- only one S3 ls command is used

... from specific backup

docker exec <container_name> sh restore.sh <timestamp>

Development

Build the image locally

ALPINE_VERSION determines Postgres version compatibility. See build-and-push-images.yml for the latest mapping.

DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build --build-arg ALPINE_VERSION=3.24 .

Run a simple test environment with Docker Compose

cp .env.example .env
# fill out your secrets/params in .env
docker compose up -d

Acknowledgements

This project is an update of the excellent eeshugerman/postgres-backup-s3, which in turn is a fork and re-structuring of schickling/postgres-backup-s3 and schickling/postgres-restore-s3.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2017 Johannes Schickling

Copyright (c) 2022 Elliott Shugerman

Copyright (c) 2026 Romein van Buren

Licensed under the MIT license.