May you please share what types of check if there to guarantee the backup is 
trustworthy.

Regards,
Dinesh Chandra
|Database administrator (Oracle/PostgreSQL)| Cyient Ltd. Noida.

From: l...@laurent-hasson.com [mailto:l...@laurent-hasson.com]
Sent: 02 March, 2017 9:57 PM
To: Rick Otten <rottenwindf...@gmail.com>; Dinesh Chandra 12108 
<dinesh.chan...@cyient.com>
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] How Can I check PostgreSQL backup is successfully or not 
?

It'd be so nice to have some checks to guarantee the backup is trustworthy. 
Restoring the db is imho not a very good option in general:
 - large databases are a problem. My db is about 3TB. Time plus disk space is a 
big blocker.
 - also, what if the backup is incomplete? Just restoring the db successfully 
is not enough right? You'd have to compare with the prod to make sure nothing 
was missed... in a fast moving outfit where the db today will have tons of 
new/changed deleted stuff from yesterday.. how to even do that?

I am in a warehouse environment, so I have given ‎up on guaranteeing backups 
and in a case of trouble, i'll spend 20h rebuilding my db. So I have a way out 
but i'd much prefer working with trustworthy backups.


Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
From: Rick Otten
Sent: Thursday, March 2, 2017 08:19
To: Dinesh Chandra 12108
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org<mailto:pgsql-performance@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] How Can I check PostgreSQL backup is successfully or not 
?


This reminds me - I have had a case where the exit code for pg_dump was 
successful, but the backup was still corrupted on disk.  By all means check the 
exit code, but I strong encourage a second validation, such as the index 
listing, to increase your confidence that the backup was successful.

The best way to ensure good backups is to establish a regular practice of 
restoring a backup to another database.  The easiest such practice to justify 
and implement is to maintain a developer/development database, and to use your 
production database backups to rebuild it on a regular basis.  Other approaches 
could include regularly scheduled Disaster Recovery exercises, or simply 
spinning up throw away cloud instances for the purpose.

pg_dump uses the ordinary postgresql COPY command to extract data from the 
tables.  Beyond that, I'm not sure how it works.  Sorry I can't help you there.


On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:05 AM, Dinesh Chandra 12108 
<dinesh.chan...@cyient.com<mailto:dinesh.chan...@cyient.com>> wrote:
Hi,

When I issue the bleow command
  > ./bin >pg_dump -U dummy_user  dummy_database; echo $?

I checked with Linux TOP command on the same server, it was showing COPY 
database.
What exactly it doing ??

Regards,
Dinesh Chandra

-----Original Message-----
From: vinny [mailto:vi...@xs4all.nl<mailto:vi...@xs4all.nl>]
Sent: 27 February, 2017 7:31 PM
To: John Gorman <jgor...@eldocomp.com<mailto:jgor...@eldocomp.com>>
Cc: Rick Otten <rottenwindf...@gmail.com<mailto:rottenwindf...@gmail.com>>; 
Dinesh Chandra 12108 
<dinesh.chan...@cyient.com<mailto:dinesh.chan...@cyient.com>>; 
pgsql-performance@postgresql.org<mailto:pgsql-performance@postgresql.org>; 
pgsql-performance-ow...@postgresql.org<mailto:pgsql-performance-ow...@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] How Can I check PostgreSQL backup is successfully or not 
?

On 2017-02-27 14:29, John Gorman wrote:
> Even though it's not listed in any of the documentation or “pg_dump
> --help” you can check the return code of the process. A return code
> greater than 0 (zero) usually indicates a failure
>
> ./bin >pg_dump -U dummy_user  dummy_database; echo $?
>
> 1
>
> FROM: 
> pgsql-performance-ow...@postgresql.org<mailto:pgsql-performance-ow...@postgresql.org>
> [mailto:pgsql-performance-ow...@postgresql.org<mailto:pgsql-performance-ow...@postgresql.org>]
>  ON BEHALF OF Rick
> Otten
> SENT: Monday, February 27, 2017 3:36 AM
> TO: Dinesh Chandra 12108
> CC: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org<mailto:pgsql-performance@postgresql.org>
> SUBJECT: Re: [PERFORM] How Can I check PostgreSQL backup is
> successfully or not ?
>
> Although it doesn't really tell if the pg_dump was successful (you'll
> need to do a full restore to be sure), I generate an archive list.  If
> that fails, the backup clearly wasn't successful, and if it succeeds,
> odds are pretty good that it worked:
>
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 4:35 AM, Dinesh Chandra 12108
> <dinesh.chan...@cyient.com<mailto:dinesh.chan...@cyient.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> We are taking daily full backup of PostgreSQL database using PG_DUMP
> which is automatic scheduled through Cronjobs.
>
> How can I check my yesterday backup is successfully or not?
>
> Is there any query or view by which I can check it?
>
> REGARDS,
>
> DINESH CHANDRA
>
> |DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR (ORACLE/POSTGRESQL)| CYIENT LTD. NOIDA.


It's important to note the distinction between

"the backup process did not fail"

and

"we now have a trustworthy backup"

And you can go full-paranoia and say that you can successfully create a 
perfectly working backup of the wrong database.

So what is it that you want to make sure of:
1. Did the process give an error?
2. Did the process create a usable backup?

What are the chances of #1 reporting success but still producing a bad backup?
And can #2 fail on a good database, and if so, can you detect that?


________________________________

DISCLAIMER:

This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may 
contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, 
disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended 
recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of 
the original message. Check all attachments for viruses before opening them. 
All views or opinions presented in this e-mail are those of the author and may 
not reflect the opinion of Cyient or those of our affiliates.
--
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list 
(pgsql-performance@postgresql.org<mailto:pgsql-performance@postgresql.org>)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance

Reply via email to