Building Automated Backup Scripts for My Azure-to-Local Workflow

Bash scripts for automated backups of NGINX, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and other services from Linux hosts to a remote server over SSH/SCP.

In our environment, we already had Azure cloud backups enabled for business continuity. But the team wanted nightly local copies as an extra safety net. The requirement was simple: every night, the latest configs and data should also land on our Windows server in the office.

I decided to build a lightweight, script-driven solution for this. No extra licensing, no heavy agents — just plain Bash and scp.

What the scripts do

• Snapshot of NGINX configs
• Stop/backup/restart of SQL Server Docker volumes
• PostgreSQL logical dump (pg_dumpall)
• MongoDB dumps from containers
• Packaging of Core-Fabric and Mongo dev stacks

Each archive is timestamped and shipped via scp to D:/Backups/... on the Windows host.

These jobs run every night via cron, so by morning, both Azure and local copies are available.

Why build custom scripts?

• Extra layer: Azure cloud backups were already there, but local backups offered faster restore for dev/test.
• Transparency: Archives are just .tar.gz or .sql.gz.
• Flexibility: Can stop containers where consistency matters.
• Automation: Runs unattended with logs.
• Cross-platform: Linux sources, Windows destination.

Repository structure

Full repo: linux-backup-scripts

linux-backup-scripts/
├─ scripts/
│  ├─ nginx-backup.sh
│  ├─ sqlserver-backup.sh
│  ├─ postgres-backup.sh
│  ├─ mongo-backup.sh
│  ├─ core-fabric-backup.sh
│  └─ mongo-dev-backup.sh
├─ sample.env
├─ README.md
├─ LICENSE
└─ .gitignore

Example: NGINX config snapshot

scp -P $REMOTE_PORT $tmp/${stamp}-nginx.conf ${REMOTE_USER}@${REMOTE_HOST}:$DEST_DIR

This takes /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, stamps it with the date, and sends it to the Windows path.

Database backups in brief

• SQL Server → down Docker → tar → transfer → up Docker
• PostgreSQL → pg_dumpall → gzip → transfer
• MongoDB → mongodump inside container → copy out → tar → transfer

Each writes to its own log under /var/backups.

Scheduling with cron

# Postgres backup nightly at 2:00
0 2 * * * cd /opt/linux-backup-scripts   && env $(cat .env | xargs) scripts/postgres-backup.sh   >>/var/log/postgres-backup.cron 2>&1

This is how they ran every night without fail.

Restores

• Postgres
  

  gunzip -c postgres-YYYYMMDD.sql.gz | psql -U postgres

• MongoDB
  

  tar -xzf mongodb_*.tar.gz
  mongorestore dump/

• File archives
  

  tar -xzf backup.tar.gz -C /restore/path

Security notes

• .env is ignored in Git.
• Remote user svc-backup is least-privileged.
• Key authentication over password.
• Logs rotated and monitored.

Improvements on the roadmap

• Replace scp with rsync for speed and delta sync.
• Add SHA256 checksums.
• Encrypt backups at rest.
• Wire failure notifications to Slack/email.

Closing

I used these scripts on our Azure Linux servers and send backups to our on-prem Windows server every night via SSH/SCP.

⚠️ Note: All IPs, usernames, ports, and paths shown here are placeholders. Replace them with values from your own environment before running the scripts.