Backup Monitoring

Your backup ran successfully.
It backed up nothing.

The most dangerous backup failure isn't a crash — it's a silent one. Job ran, exit 0, ping sent. Zero files copied. DeadManCheck catches what standard monitoring misses.

Start monitoring free → See quickstart
Standard backup monitoring
✓ backup.sh ran at 02:00
✓ Exit code 0
✓ Ping received
Files copied: 0  ·  source path was empty
Alert sent: no
DeadManCheck
✓ backup.sh ran at 02:00
✓ Exit code 0
✓ Ping received
files_copied: 0  ·  assertion: files_copied > 0
⚠ Assertion failed — alert sent

Three ways backups fail silently

⏰

Backup stops running

The job never starts. Cron misconfiguration, server rebooted, scheduler broken. You get no ping and no alert — unless you're monitoring for it.

⌛

Backup runs too long

A 5-minute backup takes 3 hours. Slow disk, table lock, network issue. Standard monitoring stays green. DeadManCheck alerts when duration drifts from baseline.

📭

Backup runs but copies nothing

Source path empty. Auth expired. Snapshot mounted to wrong directory. Job exits 0, ping sent, dashboard green — until you need to restore and there's nothing there.

Monitor your backup in 3 lines

Wrap your backup script. Send the file count with the ping. Set an assertion. Done.

# Bash — with duration + output monitoring
curl -s https://deadmancheck.io/ping/your-token/start
FILES=$(rsync -av /source/ /backup/ | grep -c "^")
curl -s -X POST https://deadmancheck.io/ping/your-token/end \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d "{\"files_copied\": $FILES}"
# Python
import requests, subprocess
requests.get("https://deadmancheck.io/ping/your-token/start")
result = run_backup()
requests.post("https://deadmancheck.io/ping/your-token/end",
json={"files_copied": result.count, "size_mb": result.size_mb})

Then set assertion files_copied > 0 in the dashboard. Alert fires if your backup ever runs empty.

Everything you need for backup monitoring

✓
Missing backup alerts
Alert via email, Slack, or webhook when your backup job doesn't check in on schedule.
✓
Duration monitoring
Learns your backup's normal runtime. Alerts when it takes significantly longer — disk issues, slow network, unexpectedly large datasets.
✓
Did it actually back anything up?
Validate files copied, bytes written, or any metric your backup produces. Alert the moment your backup runs empty.
✓
Works with any backup tool
rsync, pg_dump, mysqldump, Restic, Borg, rclone, custom scripts — anything that runs from a shell.

Related guides

Feature
Cron job output monitoring
How output assertions work
Feature
Monitor long-running cron jobs
Catch backups that take far too long
Use case
ETL job monitoring
Monitor data pipelines for silent failures

Know your backup actually worked

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