DigitalOcean

To back up a DigitalOcean managed PostgreSQL database, Backup connects to its Postgres like any other Postgres. DigitalOcean runs real community Postgres under the hood. Three DigitalOcean specifics are worth knowing before you start: which connection details to use, DigitalOcean's Trusted Sources firewall, and its non-standard port.

Which connection string

Use the direct database connection, not a connection pool.

• DigitalOcean listens on a non-standard port. The direct database is on 25060; a connection pool, if you create one, is on 25061.
• DigitalOcean's connection pools run PgBouncer. A transaction-mode pool breaks pg_dump, so point Backup at the direct database on 25060, not at a pooler endpoint.
• The default database is defaultdb and the default admin user is doadmin. You can back up defaultdb directly, or a database you created on the cluster.

Find the connection details

1. In the DigitalOcean control panel, open Databases and select your cluster.
2. On the Overview tab, find the Connection details panel.
3. Keep the network selector on Public network (Backup connects over the public internet). Use VPC network only if you run Backup inside the same DigitalOcean VPC, which is not the case here.
4. Leave the Database/Pool selector on your database (for example defaultdb), not on a connection pool.
5. Switch the format dropdown to Connection string and copy the URI. It looks like:

postgresql://doadmin:<your-password>@<cluster>-do-user-000000-0.k.db.ondigitalocean.com:25060/defaultdb?sslmode=require

Set SSL mode to require and paste the host, port 25060, database, user, and password into Backup's credentials step.

DigitalOcean requires SSL. Its connection details already carry sslmode=require, which encrypts the connection in transit. You don't need to download DigitalOcean's CA certificate for Backup: sslmode=require works without it. The cluster is reachable over IPv4. For least privilege, create a read-only role and use its credentials instead of doadmin (which is not a superuser but has more than a backup needs) — see read-only role snippets.

Network access

DigitalOcean managed databases sit behind a Trusted Sources firewall. Once you add any trusted source, the cluster accepts connections only from the sources on that list, so Backup's egress IP has to be on it.

1. In the control panel, open Databases and select your cluster.
2. Open the Settings tab and find Trusted Sources (some editions label this the Network access section), then choose Edit / Add trusted sources.
3. Add 18.196.207.101 as an IP address and save.

Trusted sources can be IP addresses or CIDR ranges, Droplets, Kubernetes clusters, tags, or App Platform apps. Backup connects from a fixed IPv4 address, so add it as a plain IP address. See network access.

Restore tests

Every backup can be restore-tested: Backup restores it into a throwaway vanilla Postgres engine and confirms your data comes back. DigitalOcean ships no proprietary or platform-only extensions. Everything it offers (pg_stat_statements, pgcrypto, pgvector, and the rest) is a standard community or contrib extension, so there's nothing DigitalOcean-managed for a restore test to flag, and tests run clean.

One caveat that isn't DigitalOcean-specific: if your database uses a heavy extension the default managed engine doesn't bundle, like PostGIS or TimescaleDB, point restore tests at a scratch target that already has it, rather than the managed engine. That's about the extension, not about DigitalOcean — see restore testing.

From there, it's the standard flow

Backup runs a full pg_dump on your schedule and writes the encrypted archive to storage you control. You can download any backup and restore it with standard Postgres tools, independent of Norcube, which is the point of an off-site copy. To wire it all up, follow connect a database.