The old adage that a DBA or SRE is only as good as their last backup is true. PostgreSQL 17 added the ability to combine multiple incremental backups with a full backup to provide a complete data dictionary to recover a failed system. It is very easy to use.
This is a quick example of using incrementals. I recommend watching this video by Robert Haas for more details and some discussion of backup strategies.
Click through to see how it all works. But also please test your backups, because if I were to modify the adage, I’d say that a DBA is only as good as his last tested backup.