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

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.

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What the scripts do

The scripts handle:

• 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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
  

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Security notes

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

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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.

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Closing

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

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