Re: Are file system level differential/incremental backups possible? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Julien Rouhaud
Subject Re: Are file system level differential/incremental backups possible?
Date
Msg-id CAOBaU_aAUqj2JvnLGnhP+p23x5sx26bUS7zk5uPebHVnMPi+Ew@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Are file system level differential/incremental backups possible?  (Bob Hatfield <bobhatfield@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: Are file system level differential/incremental backups possible?
List pgsql-general
As there's one file for each object, a single update on each would make you to copy the all the file again. I heard there was tool to make differentiel copy of a part of a file but I don't know if it's really efficient.

Anyway, a better way for you would be to do a regular backup (with pg_start_backup, copy and pg_stop_backup) and then use wal archive_command to keep the xlogs between 2 full backups.

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 11:30 PM, Bob Hatfield <bobhatfield@gmail.com> wrote:
Is it possible to do a full file system level backup of the data
directory, say once a week, and differentials or incrementals daily?

I'm wondering if there are files that would normally be removed that a
restore: Full then diff/inc would not remove and perhaps
corrupt/confuse things.

Process:
Saturday: Full backup (reset archive bits) of data dir with database shutdown
Sunday: Differential (don't reset archive bits) of data dir with
database shutdown
Monday: Differential (don't reset archive bits) of data dir with
database shutdown
Wednesday: Restore to test server using Saturday's Full and Monday's
Differential.

Obviously this works for regular files/file systems; however, I'm not
sure this is a good method with postgresql as the resulting data dir
*may* (?) contain extra files (or other issues)?

Note: our database is 850GB (Windows 2008 R2 pg version 8.3.12)

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