Re: risks of backup using filesystem snapshot/dump ?

Jim Mercer wrote:
> i'm running pgsql 9.1.3 (soon to be upgraded to 9.2.x) on FreeBSD 8-STABLE.
>
> i've got a db of some 550GB that i want to backup on a daily basis, as we
> have had some nasty hardware/power/other issues of late.
>
> with dump on FreeBSD, you can specify -L, which does a filesystem level
> snapshot before the dump starts, and then clears it afterwards.
>
> i did a backup using dump on the filesystems, except for $PGDATA, followed
> by a pg_dumpall.
> this took 4 hours, and ate some 30GB (after compression)
>
> i'm currently doing a dump of the filesystems, including $PGDATA.
> this is looking like it will take 6-7 hours, and looks like it will take
> some 40-50GB (after compression)
>
> if i were to attempt a restore by replaying the 'pg_dumpall', i suspect that
> i would be looking at many hours, and possibly hiccups requiring re-runs, etc.
>
> i'm alot more comfortable with the idea of just restoring the filesystem
> dump.
>
> so, the question becomes, if i restore a filesystem snapshot backup, the
> DB will be in a 'crashed' state.
>
> what, if any, risks are there with regards to corruption, or the inability to
> actually use the restored DB?

If the filesystem snapshot is truly atomic, that should work fine:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/backup-file.html

If you do a pg_start_backup before and a pg_stop_backup after the
snapshot, you'd gain the additional advantage of point-in-time-recovery
(if you archive WAL files).

Yours,
Laurenz Albe