How backup huge pgsql ?

[Peter Schuller]

> I want to known how can I make backup of huge postgresql database (huge
> mean ~ 2To).
>
> I can stop the access of the database during N>>1 hours.
>
> Any idea about this ?

pg_dump should work as usual. No need to stop database access since read-only 
access won't block anything else and it won't be blocked by other processes.

That said, pg_dump:ing a database that is 2 terrabytes in size is going to 
take some significant time. If you want to maintain frequent backups you may 
want to look into using point in time recovery and WAL archiving. See:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/continuous-archiving.html

Also the very long transaction used for the backup will prevent vacuuming from 
freeing tuples for the duration of the backup. If you have tables that rely 
on very frequent vacuuming for performance, those may be affected.

-- 
/ Peter Schuller

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