Re: pg_dump / pg_dumpall / memory issues

We're running the 7.3 series. We are getting better backup performance 
than 7.2 indeed. Looking at pg_dump.c -- it seems to use the COPY 
command so perhaps throttling in the code may not be the best solution. 
I did see the notes about this that Tom mentioned.

> So I'm wondering if the simple solution might be to either use a slower 
> box / network connection / throttled port on the backup box, or just 
> backup into another database since the copies into the other machine 
> probably slow things down enough to render less of a load on the server 
> being backed up. 

Hmmm... that might be an interesting solution. We do have a slower 
standby DB, that would be excellent for that purpose. It would be an 
added incentive too, because the standby DB would be hot after backup. 
I'm gonna give this a shot and report back. I guess we can do a 
pg_dumpall from the standby DB as soon as the main DB has finished 
backing up too!

Regards
- Ericson Smith
eric@did-it.com

scott.marlowe wrote:

>What version of pgsql are you running?  I've gotten MUCH better backup 
>restore performance on 7.3 series than I did with 7.2.  I can backup 1 gig 
>of data in about 10 minutes across 100 Base Tx network with a pipe like 
>so:
>
>pg_dump -h hostname databasename | psql databasename 
>
>It took something like 30 minutes to an hour before to do this in 7.2.x.
>
>(My box is a dual PIII 750 with 1.5 gig ram, and a 10KRPM UWScsi drive for 
>the database seperate from the system.)
>
>
>
>  
>