Best practice for 8.1.5 -> 8.2 migration - with big database?

Started by Mason Haleabout 19 years ago3 messagesgeneral
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#1Mason Hale
masonhale@gmail.com

From what I've read about postgres 8.2, upgrading from any previous
version requires a full database dump and restore.

I am working with largish database (~70GB) that I would like to upgrade to 8.2.
A full database dump currently takes ~3 hrs, I expect a restore
require a similar timeframe if not more.

So, I'm fishing to see of there are alternatives to taking our
production database down for 6+ hours do this upgrade. Can slony or
wal files be of help here?

I realize I can do a pg_dump with the database online, but that dump
will not include data added after the data dump for each table starts,
correct? Is there way to get just the data after a certain point in
time (say after the pg_dump started)?

Also -- due to hardware limitations, we need to install 8.2.x on the
same hardware 8.1.5 is currently running on. Can those two versions
exist side-by-side? If something goes wrong, I want to be able to
rollback to 8.1.5.

thanks in advance,
Mason

#2Erik Jones
erik@myemma.com
In reply to: Mason Hale (#1)
Re: Best practice for 8.1.5 -> 8.2 migration - with big database?

Mason Hale wrote:

From what I've read about postgres 8.2, upgrading from any previous

version requires a full database dump and restore.

I am working with largish database (~70GB) that I would like to
upgrade to 8.2.
A full database dump currently takes ~3 hrs, I expect a restore
require a similar timeframe if not more.

So, I'm fishing to see of there are alternatives to taking our
production database down for 6+ hours do this upgrade.

Check out <a
href="http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pg-migrator/&quot;&gt;pg_migrator&lt;/a&gt;.

#3Peter Eisentraut
peter_e@gmx.net
In reply to: Mason Hale (#1)
Re: Best practice for 8.1.5 -> 8.2 migration - with big database?

Mason Hale wrote:

So, I'm fishing to see of there are alternatives to taking our
production database down for 6+ hours do this upgrade. Can slony or
wal files be of help here?

Slony can, but WAL files will not work between different versions.

Also -- due to hardware limitations, we need to install 8.2.x on the
same hardware 8.1.5 is currently running on. Can those two versions
exist side-by-side?

Sure. Just set a different port and different data directory.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/