Re: PG Dump on 11 - Restore on 16 - is possible?

On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 5:47 AM Durumdara <durumdara(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> Hello!
>
> We have to upgrade our server. The PG upgrade is impossible because of too
> much data.
> So we will create a new server with PG 16, and we have to migrate the
> databases one by one (from a PG 11 server).
>
> Is it possible?
>
> Does PG16 read PG11 dumps and restore them correctly on the PG16 server?
>

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/16.0/
"See Section 19.6 <https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/upgrading.html> for
general information on migrating to new major releases."

Section 19.6: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/upgrading.html
"Current releases of the dump programs can read data from any server
version back to 9.2."

The major flaw in Section 19.6 is that it repeatedly says "use pg_dumpall",
and only mentions pg_dump once. Don't use pg_dumpall; use pg_dump in
"directory mode" with multiple threads. ("pg_dumpall --globals" is
critical for roles and whatnot.)

This is how I recently migrated three multi-TB PG 9.6 RHEL6 servers to PG
14 on RHEL8.

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