Re: Suggestions needed about how to dump/restore a database

On Wed, 2006-12-20 at 10:37 +0100, Olivier Boissard wrote:
> Chris Hoover a écrit :
> > One other option is to shut the database down competely, and then do a
> > copy of the file system the new server. I have done this when I need
> > to move a very large database to a new server. I can copy 500GB's in
> > a couple of hours, where restoring my large databases backups would
> > take 10+ hours. Just make sure you are keeping postgres at the same
> > version level.
> >
> > HTH,
> >
> > Chris
> >
> > On 12/19/06, *Arnau* <arnaulist(at)andromeiberica(dot)com
> > <mailto:arnaulist(at)andromeiberica(dot)com>> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've got a DB in production that is bigger than 2GB that dumping it
> > takes more than 12 hours. I have a new server to replace this old one
> > where I have restore the DB's dump. The problem is I can't afford to
> > have the server out of business for so long, so I need your advice
> > about
> > how you'd do this dump/restore. The big amount of data is placed
> > in two
> > tables (statistics data), so I was thinking in dump/restore all
> > except
> > this two tables and once the server is running again I'd dump/restore
> > this data. The problem is I don't know how exactly do this.
> >
> > Any suggestion?
> >
> > Thanks
> > --
> > Arnau
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------(end of
> > broadcast)---------------------------
> > TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
> > choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
> > match
> >
> >
> How many tables have you got in your database ?
>
> If you have only a few tables you can dump them one at a time

This approach can get you into serious trouble. Say you a have two
tables (a and b) that reference one another - you dump table a at time
t1. You dump table b at time t2. In between t1 and t2, you delete a
tuple from a and it's referenced tuple from b. Your dump is garbage.

--
Brad Nicholson 416-673-4106
Database Administrator, Afilias Canada Corp.