Area: reliability · Effort: M
What: Regularly restore database backups to a test environment and run automated smoke tests to verify backup integrity.
Why: Backups that have never been tested are not backups — they're hopes. Regular restore verification is the only way to ensure recovery is actually possible.
Acceptance Criteria:
- A weekly automated job restores the latest backup to an isolated test database
- After restoration, smoke tests verify: user count, vault count, and latest transaction are consistent with the source
- The verification result (pass/fail) is emailed to the ops team
- Test environment is torn down after verification
Hints:
- Run as a GitHub Actions scheduled workflow or cron job on the ops server
- Use
pg_restore for PostgreSQL backup restoration
- Store the verification result in a
backup_verifications log table
Area: reliability · Effort: M
What: Regularly restore database backups to a test environment and run automated smoke tests to verify backup integrity.
Why: Backups that have never been tested are not backups — they're hopes. Regular restore verification is the only way to ensure recovery is actually possible.
Acceptance Criteria:
Hints:
pg_restorefor PostgreSQL backup restorationbackup_verificationslog table