Backups

Hi Richard,

it's no easy answer. If your server has plenty of free resources there
won't be trouble, but I do have customers who cannot even imagine of
launching a dump in normal traffic hours. How loaded is your box, currently?

Cheerio
Bèrto

On 15 March 2012 12:15, Richard Harley <richard@scholarpack.com> wrote:

**
Hello all

Very simple question - does pg_dump/dumpall hit the server in terms of
database performance? We currently do nightly backups and I want to move to
hourly backups but not at the expense of hogging all the resources for 5
mins.

Pg_dumpall is currently producing a 1GB file - that's the combined size of
around 30 databases and it takes around 5 mins to run.

Thanks
Rich

--
==============================
If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in a
darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music.

Thanks for a quick reply. The server has 6 cores, 6GB ram and top gets
to 2.3-2.5 load average when running the dumpall. So I assume we are
nowhere near this causing performance issues for users?
Thanks
Rich

Hi

yes, if you get like ~2.5 when running it in peak hour it should definitely
be harmless.

Bèrto

On 15 March 2012 12:37, Richard Harley <richard@scholarpack.com> wrote:

**
Thanks for a quick reply. The server has 6 cores, 6GB ram and top gets to
2.3-2.5 load average when running the dumpall. So I assume we are nowhere
near this causing performance issues for users?
Thanks
Rich

On 15/03/12 12:21, Bèrto ëd Sèra wrote:

Hi Richard,

it's no easy answer. If your server has plenty of free resources there
won't be trouble, but I do have customers who cannot even imagine of
launching a dump in normal traffic hours. How loaded is your box, currently?

Cheerio
Bèrto

On 15 March 2012 12:15, Richard Harley <richard@scholarpack.com> wrote:

Hello all

Very simple question - does pg_dump/dumpall hit the server in terms of
database performance? We currently do nightly backups and I want to move to
hourly backups but not at the expense of hogging all the resources for 5
mins.

Pg_dumpall is currently producing a 1GB file - that's the combined size of
around 30 databases and it takes around 5 mins to run.

Thanks
Rich

--
==============================
If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in a
darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music.

--
==============================
If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in a
darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music.

On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 6:15 AM, Richard Harley <richard@scholarpack.com> wrote:

Hello all

Very simple question -  does pg_dump/dumpall hit the server in terms of
database performance? We currently do nightly backups and I want to move to
hourly backups but not at the expense of hogging all the resources for 5
mins.

Pg_dumpall is currently producing a 1GB file - that's the combined size of
around 30 databases and it takes around 5 mins to run.

I'd suggest you look at using PITR backups.

Richard Harley wrote:

Very simple question - does pg_dump/dumpall hit the server in terms

of database performance? We

currently do nightly backups and I want to move to hourly backups but

not at the expense of hogging

all the resources for 5 mins.

Pg_dumpall is currently producing a 1GB file - that's the combined

size of around 30 databases and it

takes around 5 mins to run.

pg_dump will be a performance hit, because it consumes disk I/O
capacity.
You could measure how the system is affected by your current backup.

On the other hand, instead of doing an hourly pg_dump, it might be
preferable to do a filesystem backup and PITR. That way you have to
do a backup only once a day (or week, depends how much traffic you have
and how fast you have to restore) and can still recover to an
arbitrary point in time.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

Perhaps a RAM DISK could be considered in the equation