Hi community,
I’m one of the maintainers of Portabase, and this is my first time sharing about it on Lemmy.
Portabase is an open-source platform for database backup and restore.
It’s designed to be simple, reliable, and lightweight, without exposing your databases to public networks. It works via a central server and edge agents (like Portainer), making it perfect for self-hosted or edge environments.
It currently supports 7 databases:
PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis and Valkey
Repository: https://github.com/Portabase/portabase
(we hit 500 stars recently!)
Key features:
- Logical backups for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, SQLite, Redis, Valkey
- Multiple storage backends: local filesystem, S3, Cloudflare R2, Google Drive
- Notifications via Discord, Telegram, Slack, webhooks, etc.
- Cron-based scheduling with flexible retention strategies
- Agent-based architecture for secure, edge-friendly deployments
- Ready-to-use Docker Compose setup and Helm Chart
What’s coming next:
- Increasing test coverage
- Extending database support
I’d love to hear from you: which database would you like to see supported next in Portabase?
This looks exciting! A couple of questions:
- How would I deploy an agent into an existing docker container in a way that makes it persist across restarts? Most of my databases are running in containers.
- Regarding redis and valkey: what good does backup do without restore? Not trying to denigrate; I just really want to understand how that is useful.
Thanks for building this!
Hi,
-
The agent need to be on the same network as your database. You can either include the agent in the same Docker Compose setup or create a Docker network to link them. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘persist across restarts.’ Can you clarify? However, it works perfectly fine with databases running in Docker.
-
For Redis and Valkey, hot restores are unfortunately not supported. You need to stop the services and perform some manual operations. This limitation is why backups are mainly useful for disaster recovery rather than live rollback.
Feel free to ask any other questions or clarification if needed.
-
Can you explain to me how the core backup process works? I browsed the git repo, but could not find it after about 10 minutes.
For example PostgreSQL: does it just do a pg_dump of a whole database? Or table for table? What about incremental backups? Are these implemented? And if so, what’s the concept behind it?
Otherwise I would not see any use for larger (dozens of gigabytes and more) databases.
Currently, the backup process is logical. Incremental backups are not implemented yet, as supporting them across multiple database systems (PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, etc.) would require significant development effort.
The system relies on the database’s native tools when possible, such as pg_dump for PostgreSQL or mongodump for MongoDB. Table-level backups are not currently supported, but could be introduced in the future if there is enough demand.
Thanks for the clarification. Now I know, that I’ll stick to my daily cronjob that just runs pg_dump via ssh to another machine. I get e-mail notifications with my simple shell script as well.
Is it possible for you to release a version on the unraid Community Apps catalog? https://unraid.net/community/apps
I think it’s just a wiring into the dockerhub repo. Unraid can set up the container directly from dockerhub, but it has to guess at ports and variables, so it came out a bit janky when I tried doing that. Having it on CA proper would remove a barrier for entry getting it running on unraid.
I wasn’t aware of this. I’ll take a look! Is it similar to Dokploy or Coolify?
Thanks for looking into it :)
Unraid is a linux-based server OS for NAS that can run VMs, dockers, and other things - and the CA is the go-to for installing 99% of the plugins and dockers that one would typically use.
I’ve not heard of those two you mentioned, but I’ve heard proxmox mentioned in the same context, so it could be considered similar to that?
Okay, yeah, I see. Unraid Community Apps is probably closer to something like Proxmox VE Scripts. Dokploy and Coolify are more like libraries of templates for Docker services.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CA (SSL) Certificate Authority Git Popular version control system, primarily for code NAS Network-Attached Storage SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.
[Thread #180 for this comm, first seen 18th Mar 2026, 08:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I tried it a few versions ago, but why could I not configure the agents via the web UI? Why a editing manually a json or toml per database? Is this possible now? Connect the agent one time with the dashboard and do the rest via UI? This is a feature I really want
Hi @morethanevil@lemmy.fedifriends.social, We’ve received similar feedback from other users, so we are currently working on it. However, this requires changes to some internal processes, as the system was not initially designed this way. Thanks for the feedback!
Personally, I think going local file config first was the right decision, depending on what the target audience is. For homelab users with one or two databases it may seem like extra work. For professionals or advanced users who like, or even need, to automate using tools like Ansible etc this makes it easier to deploy on larger scale. You can of course allow users to update settings after the fact through the UI while keeping the json file. I have dropped projects in the past due to the exact issue that its only configurable to the UI that makes bulk operations or automation hard or impossible.
I’m currently using shell scripts (pg_dump) and crontabs to back up my databases, so thanks, will check it out!
Thanks for sharing your use case. To be transparent, we didn’t consider automation when we created the local file config, but it’s indeed the perfect use case for this mode of operation. In any case, we’ll keep the current behaviour to avoid breaking changes. This will be introduced as an additional feature.
Okay, will keep an eye on the release notes and give it another try if this is implemented! Anyway it is great that remote backup is supported this is a feature other tools like Databasus don’t have.
I’ll keep you updated on this. And yes, remote backups are one of our key differences compared to other systems: the agent-based architecture enables operations across multiple networks without requiring SSH tunnels or exposing databases publicly.
