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Adding a Repository

A backrest repository maps to the concept of a restic repository (and is indeed a restic repo under-the-hood). A repository is a location where backrest will store your backups.

To add a repository, click the "Add Repository" button on the side nav. You will be prompted to enter a name for the repository and a path to the repository. The path can be a local path or a remote path (e.g. an S3 bucket). See the restic docs for more details on the types of repositories that restic supports. Backrest allows you to configure environment variables which should be used to pass additional credentials for remote repositories. For example, if you are using an S3 bucket, you can configure the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variables to pass your AWS credentials to restic.

Adding a Plan

A plan is a new concept introduced by backrest. A plan is a set of rules for backing up data. A plan can be configured to backup one or more directories to a single repository. Each plan has it's own schedule and retention policy controlling when backups are run and how long backups are kept.

To add a plan, click the "Add Plan" button on the side nav. You will be prompted to enter a name for the plan and select a repository to backup to. You will then be prompted to select one or more directories to backup. A default retention policy is given but you can also pick between time based retention or keeping a configurable number of snapshots.

Running a Backup

Backups are run automatically based on the scheduled specified in your plan. You may additionally click the "Backup Now" button on the plan page to run a backup immediately. You can additionally trigger an immediate "Prune Now" or "Unlock Now" operation from the plan page, these operations are also run automatically in the course of a backup cycle but can be run manually if needed.

Best Practices

• Configure a reasonable retention policy for each plan. Backrest performs well up to a history of ~1000s of snapshots but too many may eventually slow performance.
• Backup your configuration (e.g. $BACKREST_CONFIG or $HOME/.config/backrest/config.json by default on Linux/MacOS)
  • Your configuration contains the encryption keys for your repositories. If you loose this file you will not be able to restore your backups.
  • You may alternatively backup your encryption keys individually in which case you will be able to use restic directly to restore your backups.