(Sorry, hit send too soon!)
> I ran pg_dump with the arguments you suggested, and my 4 GB test
> table finished backing up in about 25 minutes, which seems great.
> The only problem is that the resulting backup file was over 9 GB.
> Using -Z2 resulting in a 55 minute 6GB backup.
>
> Here's my interpretation of those results: the TOAST tables for
> our image files are compressed by Postgres. During the backup,
> pg_dump uncompresses them, and if compression is turned on,
> recompresses the backup. Please correct me if I'm wrong there.
>
> If we can't find a workable balance using pg_dump, then it looks
> like our next best alternative may be a utility to handle
> filesystem backups, which is a little scary for on-site,
> user-controlled servers.
How about a post-backup compress?
pg_dump -Z0 > uncompressed-backup.sql
gzip uncompressed-backup.sql
mv uncompressed-backup.sql.gz compressed-backup.sql.gz
Your backup is completed in reasonable time, you're just handling
the storage of the backup afterwards, while users can be using the
System again...
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