Theo Schlossnagle <jesus@omniti.com> writes:
> The real problem with a "dump" of the database is that you want to be
> able to quickly switch back to a known working copy in the event of a
> failure. A dump is the furthest possible thing from a working copy
> as one has to rebuild the database (indexes, etc.) and in doing so,
> you (1) spend the better part of a week running pg_restore and (2)
> ANALYZE stats change, so your system's behavior changes in hard-to-
> understand ways.
Seems like you should be looking into maintaining a hot spare via PITR,
if your requirement is for a bit-for-bit clone of your database.
regards, tom lane