u/eachDayIWakeUp

Hello everyone!
I’m looking for practical recommendations from people running MariaDB in production.

My backup process will use mariadb-backup with zstd compression, and I want to encrypt the resulting backup securely without adding (too much) excessive CPU, memory, or operational overhead.

I’ve considered GPG/PGP, but I’m concerned about its performance and complexity. I’ve also seen age recommended, although I’m unsure whether it provides an appropriate security level for long-term MariaDB backups.

What encryption method or workflow do you use for MariaDB backups?

In particular, I’d appreciate feedback on:

• Encryption tools and algorithms you use.
• Whether encryption happens before or after compression.
• CPU and performance impact on large backups.
• Key management, rotation, and recovery procedures.
• Whether you encrypt locally, stream directly to object storage, or use storage-side encryption (which unfortunately is not available to my usecase).
• Any practical issues with restoring backups during an outage.

I’m mainly interested in real-world experience rather than theoretical recommendations.

Hello everyone!
I’m looking for practical recommendations from people running MariaDB in production.

My backup process will use mariadb-backup with zstd compression, and I want to encrypt the resulting backup securely without adding (too much) excessive CPU, memory, or operational overhead.

I’ve considered GPG/PGP, but I’m concerned about its performance and complexity. I’ve also seen age recommended, although I’m unsure whether it provides an appropriate security level for long-term MariaDB backups.

What encryption method or workflow do you use for MariaDB backups?

In particular, I’d appreciate feedback on:

• Encryption tools and algorithms you use.
• Whether encryption happens before or after compression.
• CPU and performance impact on large backups.
• Key management, rotation, and recovery procedures.
• Whether you encrypt locally, stream directly to object storage, or use storage-side encryption (which unfortunately is not available to my usecase).
• Any practical issues with restoring backups during an outage.

I’m mainly interested in real-world experience rather than theoretical recommendations.

Hello all,

With the current status of AI models and agentic workflows im really curious how the current capture the flag events scene is.

Last time I visited such an event was way before AI was commercialized. Out of curiosity I did a test which worked well, I saw if I can solve ctf challenges only using AI, and it worked.

So my question is, is this allowed on such events? Are there specific guardrails? Do you still join teams and get to know new people? Is this a "pay to win" now for people with best/jailbroken AI models?

What are your thoughts on this?

Hi everyone,

I’m about to deploy OpenBao for the first time (no prior Vault experience either). From what I’ve read, OpenBao is a fork of Vault 1.14 and is largely API/CLI-compatible, so a lot of Vault concepts should carry over

For those who’ve already done this:

- Did you use Vault courses/docs as your main learning path when getting started with OpenBao?

- Roughly how much of that material was directly applicable vs. needing OpenBao-specific adjustments?

- Any OpenBao-specific resources you’d recommend for a first-time deployer with zero Vault background?

I’m planning a self-hosted setup on k3s and want to invest my learning time efficiently. If a Vault course is mostly applicable, I’m happy to take one and then layer on OpenBao docs otherwise I’d rather go straight to OpenBao-focused material.

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

Python 3.15 coming soon!