RecoverProof vs writing your own restore test script
A basic restore test is a weekend project: fetch the latest dump, restore it into a container, check the exit code. We even publish a tested script that does it. The question isn't whether you can build it, but what it takes to keep it trustworthy for years.
What a DIY script usually covers
- Restore the newest dump into a throwaway database
- Fail if the restore reports errors
- Maybe count rows in a table or two
- Send an alert from cron if the script exits non-zero
What tends to be missing
| Gap | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Monitoring the monitor | When the cron job itself stops running, silence looks exactly like success. It needs a dead man's switch. |
| History | "The orders table has 40,000 rows" means nothing without knowing it had 2 million last week. Catching shrinking tables, stale replicas and dropped tables needs stored results and comparisons. |
| Physical checks | Reading every row back and checking indexes (amcheck) catches corruption a successful restore can hide. |
| Evidence | Auditors want a record of every test: what was restored, the result, the duration, and how failures were handled. A log file on one server rarely survives to the audit. |
| Upkeep | New Postgres major versions, new databases, changed bucket layouts, rotated credentials. Each one silently breaks a script nobody owns any more. |
| Safety | Restored production data has to stay isolated and be deleted afterwards. Easy to get wrong in a quick script. |
Honest guidance
- Build it yourself if you have one or two databases, a team member who'll own it, and no audit coming up. Start from our script and add a dead man's switch.
- Use RecoverProof when you have several databases, an ISO 27001, SOC 2 or NIS2 audit, or you'd rather not own another piece of infrastructure. The runner does the restore inside your infrastructure; the history, alerting and evidence are handled for you.
Want the script without the upkeep? RecoverProof is that script, maintained, monitored and turned into audit evidence.