Keep point-in-time recovery for busy databases

Where losing a day of writes is not acceptable, keep the database's change log, so you can restore to any moment.

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 20 October 2026.

How to do it

In PostgreSQL, archive the write-ahead log with a tool such as pgBackRest or WAL-G. In MySQL, keep the binary log. Managed databases offer it as a setting. It also undoes mistakes, such as a bad DELETE, by restoring to the minute before.

How to check

Restore a staging copy to a chosen time 10 minutes ago. A row written 5 minutes ago is missing, and one written 15 minutes ago is there.

For agents: if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in Based on the Agent Wranglers data playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data/backups-and-recovery/point-in-time-recovery.