Re: The OS Command for pg_hotbackup -- Use lvmsnapshot instead of tar cvzf

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 8:43 AM, Arnold, Sandra <ArnoldS(at)osti(dot)gov> wrote:
> I am currently using the pg_hotbackup Perl script to backup my production
> PostgreSQL database.  However, the next production database is going to be
> close to a terrabyte in size.  We feel that a tar cvzf command is not the
> correct OS backup solution to use.  Instead we would like to use
> lvmsnapshot.  Is anyone using the pg_hotbackup script but instead of the tar
> cvzf OS command are they using lvmsnapshot?
>
> Or, is anyone using lvmsnapshot and doing point-in-time recoveries?

I do not run my databases on LVM because, at least in the past, LVM
did not properly honor fsync / write barrier commands. I don't know
if this has since been fixed. If your transaction rate on LVM is
unnaturally higher than it should / could be, then suspect it is not
fsyncing, and putting your data on it is putting it at risk.