Re: pgbackrest when data/base is symlinked to another volume

On 09/07/2018 05:22 PM, David Steele wrote:
> Hi Ron,
>
> On 9/6/18 11:21 PM, Ron wrote:
>>
>> Will pgbackrest properly backup and restore the cluster if data/base, 
>> data/pg_xlog and data/pg_log are symlinks?
>>
>> PGDATA=/var/lib/pgsql/9.6/data
>> $PGDATA/base -> /Database/9.6/base
>> $PGDATA/pg_log -> /Database/9.6/pg_log
>> $PGDATA/pg_xlog -> /Database/9.6/pg_xlog
>
> Yes, this will work.  Note that restore does not recreate symlinks by 
> default so you'll need to specify --link-all to enable symlink creation.
>
> See 
> https://pgbackrest.org/configuration.html#section-restore/option-link-all 
> for details.
>
> Using symlinks in this way will make management of your clusters more 
> difficult, mostly because systems need more provisioning before restores 
> can be performed.  In general I'd recommend against it unless there are 
> performance considerations.
>
> Also, you might consider using log_directory to relocate log files rather 
> than a symlink.  This will exclude log files from your backup which is 
> usually preferable -- primary logs restored to a standby are out of 
> context and can cause confusion.

Thanks for the tips.  I'll probably implement that on our new systems.

-- 
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.