Backing up postgresql data

Andrew L. Gould algould at datawok.com
Mon Oct 24 10:45:20 PDT 2005


On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 11:02:11 -0600
Pat Maddox <pergesu at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've got postgresql 8 running on my system, and want to do nightly
> backups of the database.  I took a look at the docs, and there are a
> few methods of doing backups - pg_dump, file system level, and using
> WAL.  I just want to be able to rsync my data every night, maybe every
> few hours, so that I can recover it if there are any problems...so
> what's the best way to do this.  Are there any scripts or utilities
> available to make my life easy?
> 
> Thanks,
> Pat

Are your databases very large or extremely active?  If not, a nightly
pg_dump (or pg_dumpall) should suffice.  I've found the combination of
PostgreSQL and FreeBSD to be very stable.

If you need more frequent backups, you might consider one of
the replication solutions for PostgreSQL.  Here are links to a couple of
them that I found at PgFoundry:

http://pgfoundry.org/projects/slony1/
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgpool/

I haven't used any of the replication solutions.  Hopefully, someone
else will chime in with additional information/advice.

Best of luck,

Andrew Gould


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