Re: Incremental Backup

Majid Azimi wrote:
> What do you mean by "on-line (hot) backup weekly and a  daily archive
> backup."
>
> hot backup means using pg_dump?
> what is archive backup? you mean WAL?
The phrase "hot backup" means that the DB is open while backup is taken.
When you shut the cluster down, the backup is "cold".
I do it  by using pg_start_backup to put the database in the "backup
mode" (cause it to start logging the entire blocks in the WAL archives,
not just the changes) and then back i t up with Symantec NetBackup.
Strictly speaking, pg_dump is not backup since it cannot be used for
recovery. The function "pg_start_backup is described here:

http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/functions-admin.html

And yes, by the "archive backup" I mean WAL archives.

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Mladen Gogala
Sr. Oracle DBA
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