The main reason we came up with the idea of starting a new open source project for disaster recovery of PostgreSQL databases was the lack (back in 2011) of a simple and standard procedure for managing backups and, most importantly, recovery. Disasters and failures in ICT will happen.
As a database administrator, your duty is to plan for backups and recovery of PostgreSQL databases and perform regular tests in order to sweep away stress and fear, which typically follow those unexpected events. Barman, which stands for Backup and Recovery Manager, is definitely a tool that you can use for these purposes.
Before you dive into this recipe and the next one, which will introduce you to Barman, I recommend that you read the following recipes from earlier in this chapter: Understanding and controlling crash recovery, Planning backups, Hot physical backup...