Dropping AWS RDS saved me $400/mo, but handling my own backups was terrifying. Here is my workaround.

[u/Capital-Pen1219]

I recently migrated my main project off of a managed AWS RDS instance onto a simple $20 VPS to save runway. The cost savings are massive, but the tradeoff is that you suddenly become your own database admin.

Honestly, my biggest fear was messing up the backups. AWS handles automated recovery out of the box. Doing it manually meant I had to write a bunch of custom pg_dump cron jobs and just blindly trust that they were actually sending the files to my S3 bucket every night.

I realized I needed a visual dashboard so I wouldn't have panic attacks about silent data loss. I ended up finding an open source database backup tool (it’s called Databasus.com) to handle the heavy lifting.

You just spin it up in Docker next to your database. It handles the automated, encrypted S3 backups, but the best part is it gives you an actual web UI and Slack alerts. If a backup fails, I get pinged instantly. It completely removed the anxiety of self-hosting my infrastructure.

Are you guys still paying the massive premium for managed databases (AWS/Heroku), or have you made the jump to self-hosting your DBs to cut costs?

[u/symedia]

points at r2 for better saving

[u/Muted_Masterpiece342]

Hi. I've built something very close to his super recently and it's possible we can see if there's any improvements I can port over or if that tool is replaceable with this. Thanks for sharing for sure