Re: Cold backup with rsync -- WAL files? - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Craig James
Subject Re: Cold backup with rsync -- WAL files?
Date
Msg-id CAFwQ8rf+-rjYKYZLm=ip+OC2evfSTZwa0hEFi7WOcL6vBYXnAA@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: Cold backup with rsync -- WAL files?  (Scott Whitney <scott@journyx.com>)
Responses Re: Cold backup with rsync -- WAL files?  (Craig James <cjames@emolecules.com>)
List pgsql-admin



On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 7:24 AM, Scott Whitney <scott@journyx.com> wrote:
Why not use cascading replication for this? That's precisely what I'm doing.

rsync is much simpler, and has one huge advantage: you can fire up the backup and see if it works, and when you're done you don't have to take another base backup.  Just run rsync again and you're back in sync.

Back to my original question...

Craig



We need a "last chance" offsite backup of our backup server.  Since the backup server isn't accessed by customers, we have the luxury of being able to shut it off briefly once per day. Call server "A" the backup, server "B" is offsite backup-of-backup: The procedure I'd like to implement is:

  server B is always "cold" (Postgres not running)
  while A is running, rsync A --> B
  stop Postgres on A
  rsync A --> B
  restart Postgres on A

My question is: what about the WAL files?  Do I need to rsync them from A to B too, or can/should I just clean out B's WAL directory, or something else?

Thanks,
Craig



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