Re: Parallel pg_dump for 9.1

Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> writes:
> On 3/29/10 7:46 AM, Joachim Wieland wrote:
>> I actually assume that whenever people are interested
>> in a very fast dump, it is because they are doing some maintenance
>> task (like migrating to a different server) that involves pg_dump. In
>> these cases, they would stop their system anyway.

> Actually, I'd say that there's a broad set of cases of people who want
> to do a parallel pg_dump while their system is active. Parallel pg_dump
> on a stopped system will help some people (for migration, particularly)
> but parallel pg_dump with snapshot cloning will help a lot more people.

I doubt that. My thought about it is that parallel dump will suck
enough resources from the source server, both disk and CPU, that you
would never want to use it on a live production machine. Not even at
2am. And your proposed use case is hardly a "broad set" in any case.
Thus, Joachim's approach seems perfectly sane from here. I certainly
don't see that there's an argument for spending 10x more development
effort to pick up such use cases.

Another question that's worth asking is exactly what the use case would
be for parallel pg_dump against a live server, whether the snapshots are
synchronized or not. You will not be able to use that dump as a basis
for PITR, so there is no practical way of incorporating any changes that
occur after the dump begins. So what are you making it for? If it's a
routine backup for disaster recovery, fine, but it's not apparent why
you want max speed and to heck with live performance for that purpose.
I think migration to a new server version (that's too incompatible for
PITR or pg_migrate migration) is really the only likely use case.

regards, tom lane