It is critical in a production environment that, at minimum, you back up both your working Odoo application directories and the associated Postgres databases. Ideally, you will have server snapshots and a clear business continuity plan in place and tested. Still, it is valuable to know that Odoo provides a built-in database backup tool. I use it frequently in a variety of Odoo installations.

Before going ahead, it should be noted that this function will not be applicable to all Odoo installations. If you are running in a hosted Odoo environment, where you have been provided login credentials to your database, then you will be provided with a specific backup procedure. Make sure that you fully understand how it works and have a way to test and make sure that it functions as expected.

The easiest way to get to the backup database function is to navigate directly to the database manager by adding /web/database/manager to the end of your Odoo URL:

Here, you will see all the databases in your Odoo installation with the option to Backup, Duplicate, or Delete each of the databases.

Clicking the Backup button will bring up a simple wizard that will allow you to back up the database in a ZIP format that will contain all the filestores associated with that database, or as a pg_dump file. A filestore could contain things such as document attachments or pictures associated with your products. The pg_dump format is a standard Postgres database operation that will generate a backup of the database only, without the associated filestore.

Click the Backup button to begin backing up the database. The database will then begin downloading. (If your database is extremely large, there is a chance that the file may not be easily downloaded.)