Stacks - Automated Backup Discovery

What is a Stack?

A Stack is a connected infrastructure environment that SimpleBackups scans automatically to discover everything that should be backed up. Instead of manually creating individual backups one by one, you connect your server or cluster once and SimpleBackups finds all your databases, files, volumes, and configurations for you.

Think of it as “connect once, back up everything.”

Why use Stacks?

No manual setup per resource — discovery happens automatically

Nothing falls through the cracks — new databases or volumes added to your server are picked up on the next discovery run

Consistent settings across resources — one schedule, one storage destination, applied to everything in the stack

Centralized view — see all your backups for a given environment in one place

Supported Environments

Provider	What gets discovered
VPS / Linux Server	MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis databases · Web project files · Docker containers & volumes · Git repositories · Home directories · Custom paths
Kubernetes	Databases running in pods · Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) · ConfigMaps & Secrets · Namespace workload configs · Helm releases
Supabase	Supabase project databases and storage

How It Works

Connect — Add a Stack by selecting your environment type and linking a server (or providing credentials)

Discover — SimpleBackups connects via SSH and scans your environment for backupable resources

Review — You see a list of everything found: databases, volumes, configs, etc.

Activate — Choose which resources to back up, confirm the schedule and storage destination, and SimpleBackups starts protecting them automatically

Stay up to date — Discovery runs on a schedule so newly added resources are picked up automatically

Setting Up a Stack

Step 1 — Add your server

Before creating a Stack, make sure your server is already added to SimpleBackups under Servers. Stacks connect through the server’s existing SSH credentials.

Step 2 — Create a Stack

Go to Stacks → Create Stack and:

Give it a name (e.g. “Production Server”, “K8s Cluster”)

Select the provider type (VPS, Kubernetes, Supabase)

Select the linked server

Choose your default storage destination

Choose your default backup schedule

Step 3 — Configure discovery

Each provider lets you control what gets scanned:

Toggle on/off resource types (databases, files, Docker containers, etc.)

For Kubernetes: specify which namespaces to scan, or leave empty to scan all

Add custom paths (VPS) or configure namespace filters (Kubernetes)

Step 4 — Run discovery

Click Discover Resources. SimpleBackups connects to your environment and returns a list of everything found. This typically takes 10–30 seconds.

Step 5 — Enable backups

Review the discovered resources. For each one you want to protect:

Confirm or adjust the backup configuration (database name, path, credentials if needed)

Then complete the backup creation in a click

From this point, backups run automatically on your chosen schedule, all grouped under your Stack.

Discovery Settings

VPS / Linux Server

Setting	Default	What it does
Discover Databases	On	Detects MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis
Discover Web Projects	On	Scans `/var/www`, `/srv`, `/opt`
Discover Home Directories	Off	Scans `/home/*`
Discover Docker Containers	Off	Finds running containers and their volumes
Discover Git Repositories	Off	Finds Git repos in web directories
Custom Paths	—	Additional paths to scan

Kubernetes

See the Kubernetes Backup via Stacks guide for full details.

Managing a Stack

Re-running discovery

Click “Discover Resources” at any time to refresh the resource list. New resources will appear; existing backups already enabled will not be affected.

Discovery schedule

You can enable automatic discovery on a schedule so that new resources added to your server are detected and surfaced to you without needing to trigger it manually.

Editing a Stack

You can update the default schedule, storage destination, and discovery settings at any time from Stack → Configuration.

Stack Status

Status	Meaning
Active	Discovery has run successfully and backups are enabled
Discovering	Discovery is currently running
Error	Last discovery attempt failed — check the error message
Disabled	Discovery is turned off

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I have multiple Stacks for the same server? Yes. For example, you might have one Stack for production databases and another for file backups, with different schedules and storage destinations.

What happens to existing backups when I re-run discovery? Already-enabled backups are not changed. New resources appear in the discovered list and you can choose to enable them.

Can I disable a specific resource without deleting it? Yes. You can pause or disable individual backups from the Stack resource list without removing them from discovery.

Does discovery store my credentials? Database credentials discovered through environment variables or Kubernetes secrets are stored encrypted and are never exposed in the UI.

What if a resource isn’t discovered automatically? You can always create backups manually from the Backups section, or even add a custom resource to a Stack.

What is a Stack Backup?