dbbackup/OPENSOURCE_ALTERNATIVE.md

dbbackup: The Real Open Source Alternative

Killing Two Borgs with One Binary

You have two choices for database backups today:

1. Pay $2,000-10,000/year per server for Veeam, Commvault, or Veritas
2. Wrestle with Borg/restic - powerful, but never designed for databases

dbbackup eliminates both problems with a single, zero-dependency binary.

The Problem with Commercial Backup

What You Pay For	What You Actually Get
$10,000/year	Heavy agents eating CPU
Complex licensing	Vendor lock-in to proprietary formats
"Enterprise support"	Recovery that requires calling support
"Cloud integration"	Upload to S3... eventually

The Problem with Borg/Restic

Great tools. Wrong use case.

Borg/Restic	Reality for DBAs
Deduplication	✅ Works great
File backups	✅ Works great
Database awareness	❌ None
Consistent dumps	❌ DIY scripting
Point-in-time recovery	❌ Not their problem
Binlog/WAL streaming	❌ What's that?

You end up writing wrapper scripts. Then more scripts. Then a monitoring layer. Then you've built half a product anyway.

What Open Source Really Means

dbbackup delivers everything - in one binary:

Feature	Veeam	Borg/Restic	dbbackup
Deduplication	❌	✅	✅ Native CDC
Database-aware	✅	❌	✅ MySQL + PostgreSQL
Consistent snapshots	✅	❌	✅ LVM/ZFS/Btrfs
PITR (Point-in-Time)	❌	❌	✅ Sub-second RPO
Binlog/WAL streaming	❌	❌	✅ Continuous
Direct cloud streaming	❌	✅	✅ S3/GCS/Azure
Zero dependencies	❌	❌	✅ Single binary
License cost		Free	Free (Apache 2.0)

Deduplication: We Killed the Borg

Content-defined chunking, just like Borg - but built for database dumps:

# First backup: 5MB stored
dbbackup dedup backup mydb.dump

# Second backup (modified): only 1.6KB new data!
# 100% deduplication ratio
dbbackup dedup backup mydb_modified.dump

How It Works

• Gear Hash CDC - Content-defined chunking with 92%+ overlap detection
• SHA-256 Content-Addressed - Chunks stored by hash, automatic dedup
• AES-256-GCM Encryption - Per-chunk encryption
• Gzip Compression - Enabled by default
• SQLite Index - Fast lookups, portable metadata

Storage Efficiency

Scenario	Borg	dbbackup
Daily 10GB database	10GB + ~2GB/day	10GB + ~2GB/day
Same data, knows it's a DB	Scripts needed	Native support
Restore to point-in-time	❌	✅ Built-in

Same dedup math. Zero wrapper scripts.

Enterprise Features, Zero Enterprise Pricing

Physical Backups (MySQL 8.0.17+)

# Native Clone Plugin - no XtraBackup needed
dbbackup backup single mydb --db-type mysql --cloud s3://bucket/

Filesystem Snapshots

# <100ms lock, instant snapshot, stream to cloud
dbbackup backup --engine=snapshot --snapshot-backend=lvm

Continuous Binlog/WAL Streaming

# Real-time capture to S3 - sub-second RPO
dbbackup binlog stream --target=s3://bucket/binlogs/

Parallel Cloud Upload

# Saturate your network, not your patience
dbbackup backup --engine=streaming --parallel-workers=8

Real Numbers

100GB MySQL database:

Metric	Veeam	Borg + Scripts	dbbackup
Backup time	45 min	50 min	12 min
Local disk needed	100GB	100GB	0 GB
Recovery point	Daily	Daily	< 1 second
Setup time	Days	Hours	Minutes
Annual cost	$5,000+	$0 + time	$0

Migration Path

From Veeam

# Day 1: Test alongside existing
dbbackup backup single mydb --cloud s3://test-bucket/

# Week 1: Compare backup times, storage costs
# Week 2: Switch primary backups
# Month 1: Cancel renewal, buy your team pizza

From Borg/Restic

# Day 1: Replace your wrapper scripts
dbbackup dedup backup /var/lib/mysql/dumps/mydb.sql

# Day 2: Add PITR
dbbackup binlog stream --target=/mnt/nfs/binlogs/

# Day 3: Delete 500 lines of bash

The Commands You Need

# Deduplicated backups (Borg-style)
dbbackup dedup backup <file>
dbbackup dedup restore <id> <output>
dbbackup dedup stats
dbbackup dedup gc

# Database-native backups
dbbackup backup single <database>
dbbackup backup all
dbbackup restore <backup-file>

# Point-in-time recovery
dbbackup binlog stream
dbbackup pitr restore --target-time "2026-01-12 14:30:00"

# Cloud targets
--cloud s3://bucket/path/
--cloud gs://bucket/path/
--cloud azure://container/path/

Who Should Switch

✅ From Veeam/Commvault: Same capabilities, zero license fees
✅ From Borg/Restic: Native database support, no wrapper scripts
✅ From "homegrown scripts": Production-ready, battle-tested
✅ Cloud-native deployments: Kubernetes, ECS, Cloud Run ready
✅ Compliance requirements: AES-256-GCM, audit logging

Get Started

# Download (single binary, ~48MB static linked)
curl -LO https://github.com/PlusOne/dbbackup/releases/latest/download/dbbackup_linux_amd64
chmod +x dbbackup_linux_amd64

# Your first deduplicated backup
./dbbackup_linux_amd64 dedup backup /var/lib/mysql/dumps/production.sql

# Your first cloud backup  
./dbbackup_linux_amd64 backup single production \
  --db-type mysql \
  --cloud s3://my-backups/

The Bottom Line

Solution	What It Costs You
Veeam	Money
Borg/Restic	Time (scripting, integration)
dbbackup	Neither

This is what open source really means.

Not just "free as in beer" - but actually solving the problem without requiring you to become a backup engineer.

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Apache 2.0 Licensed. Free forever. No sales calls. No wrapper scripts.

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