warm database, tape device backup

milos.babic@gmail.com wrote:

Hi!

I have few question regarding new PostgreSQL database installation.

The potential installation will have to manage over 1.5 TB of data.

Since our customers have an increasing demand for high availability, we
decided to try with PostgreSQL's concept of warm standby database
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/warm-standby.html).

Apart from having a standby database, we MUST HAVE an enterprise class
reliable backup soltuion and the backup is our major concern now.

My first question is: is there any commercial solution for on-line backup
directly to tape device, eg like HP Data Protector or EMC NetWorker
module for Oracle?

Can you just open the tape drive in append mode and keep writing to it
as a file?

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Fri, 6 Feb 2009, milos.babic@gmail.com wrote:

Can we use on-line backup
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/backup-online.html) using
pg_start_backup and place backup segments onto a tape device directly,
without using the disk storage temporarily (because we have 1,5 TB
database)?

Yes, you can directly backup the database onto tape once you've issued
pg_start_backup. However, the "Setting up WAL archiving" step is not
optional here. That backup is useless unless you then also write to tape
the WAL archives that are generated while the backup is running. You need
to make sure all the segments referred to by the output from
pg_stop_backup are pushed to tape before your backup is complete.

There's some additional text and links to resources on this topic at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Warm_Standby you may find a useful in
addition to the manual here.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD