Scheduling backups

Run automated backups on a cron schedule.

DBdock supports three ways to run scheduled backups. Pick based on your deployment.

System cron

Simplest. A crontab entry runs dbdock backup on a schedule.

Programmatic

Long-lived Node.js process using node-cron.

Cloud scheduler

Kubernetes CronJob, AWS EventBridge, GCP Cloud Scheduler.

Option 1 — System cron (recommended for single server)

Add a crontab entry:

crontab -e

0 2 * * *  cd /app && npx dbdock backup >> /var/log/dbdock.log 2>&1

This runs a backup at 02:00 every day. Adjust the path, time, and log file.

Pros

• Simplest possible setup
• Battle-tested scheduler
• Works even if DBdock isn’t running

Cons

• Limited logging/observability
• No programmatic control
• Harder on Kubernetes/serverless

Option 2 — Programmatic with node-cron

Run DBdock as a long-lived Node.js process. Useful when you want to share backup scheduling with the rest of your app.

npm install node-cron

const { createDBDock, BackupService } = require('dbdock');
const cron = require('node-cron');

async function main() {
  const dbdock = await createDBDock();
  const backups = dbdock.get(BackupService);

  cron.schedule('0 2 * * *', async () => {
    try {
      const result = await backups.createBackup({
        compress: true,
        encrypt: true,
      });
      console.log(`Backup ${result.metadata.id} completed`);
    } catch (err) {
      console.error('Backup failed', err);
    }
  });

  console.log('Scheduler started');
}

main();

Keep the process alive with PM2, systemd, or Docker. See SDK → scheduling for more detail.

Pros

• Full control — custom logic before/after backup
• Tight integration with app observability
• Works with alert programmatic API

Cons

• Needs a long-lived process
• One more thing that can crash

Option 3 — Cloud schedulers

Kubernetes CronJob

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: dbdock-backup
spec:
  schedule: "0 2 * * *"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: dbdock
            image: node:20-alpine
            command: ["npx", "dbdock", "backup"]
            envFrom:
            - secretRef:
                name: dbdock-secrets
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

AWS EventBridge + Fargate/Lambda

Schedule rule → ECS RunTask (Fargate) that runs a DBdock container. Or package as a Lambda if your backup fits in 15 minutes and 10 GB.

GCP Cloud Scheduler + Cloud Run

Cloud Scheduler → HTTPS → Cloud Run service that invokes dbdock backup.

Pros

• Fully managed, scales with your infra
• Rich logging and retry semantics
• Runs even if your app is down

Cons

• More moving pieces
• Infrastructure-specific setup

Using the dbdock schedule command

The dbdock schedule command stores schedules in dbdock.config.json:

{
  "schedules": [
    { "name": "daily", "cron": "0 2 * * *", "enabled": true }
  ]
}

These are not executed by the CLI alone — they’re config entries. To execute them, use the programmatic approach above, which reads the schedules from the config file automatically.

If you’re using system cron or cloud schedulers, skip dbdock schedule — your scheduler of choice holds the schedule.

Recommended schedule patterns

Frequency	Cron	Use case
Every 6 hours	0 */6 * * *	High-churn production databases
Daily at 2 AM	0 2 * * *	Most production setups
Weekly	0 0 * * 0	Archival + weekly snapshots
Monthly	0 0 1 * *	Compliance retention

Pair a frequent schedule with a retention policy to keep storage under control — see Retention strategies.

See also

dbdock schedule

Manage schedules via CLI.

SDK scheduling

Programmatic scheduling details.