We take data-safety of our Mastodon user data serious and have implemented multiple levels of backups with rigorous bi-yearly restore tests and documentation.

We do:
- Periodic local file system snapshots (Every 15 minutes).

- Filesystem replication to backup-server in Germany (Hetzner, Falkenstein).

- Filesystem replication to second backup-server in Switzerland (Equinix ZH4, Zürich).

- GPG Encrypted Application-layer backup (PostgreSQL, Mastodon configuration) to server from @tux in Germany.

Every single of those backup-layers is monitored, tested (and recover-tested) bi-yearly at least.

Our infrastructure runs on FreeBSD/ZFS with one backup-layer using "zfs send/recv" plus an addition application backup layer that's using pg_dump+gpg. Just to be on the safe side.

All backup-jobs are monitored and the status (success/fail) is transperently visible on https://status.burningboard.net/

#mastodon #mastoadmin #freebsd #zfs #backups #digitalindipendence