MariaDB databases have no real backup, only a periodic copy of the disk

What we found

Neither database on the MariaDB platform has a proper backup configured. What protects them today is a periodic snapshot of the underlying disk, taken on a schedule shared with everything else.

Impact

That covers hardware failure well and mistakes badly. Recovering means going back to the last snapshot — potentially several hours — rather than to the moment before something went wrong. The service holding request history is where that would be felt.

Fix

The database platform can take proper backups on a schedule, store them in the platform's own object storage, and keep them for a defined period. A later step adds the ability to recover to any point in time rather than to the last snapshot.