Enhancement request:
For the local backup script, put all configurable items into a config file (name=value list) instead of the script itself.
For the talkback, have a section report the settings used to make the backup. This will aid in doing restores (consider if 'master-data=2' changes to 'master-data=1' - you may need to adjust your restore action appropriately.)
Further enhancement:
Have the backup script query Monolith to get the most recent config settings (dropping back to previous settings if access to Monolith is not possible.) In this way, changes to backup are picked up by the script instead of requiring a push of configuration. This may be achieved using wget/curl to a CGI on the Monolith server, using some kind of CRC/MD5/SHA1 hash of the config data to see if the config has changed and only tranferring config data when necessary.