Re: Backup issues

On 26/06/2010 2:07 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 23:24 +0530, RP Khare wrote:
>> I never used PostgreSQL in production environment. Now I got an
>> opportunity to migrate a MySQL production database to PostgreSQL.
>> Before migrating, I have few queries on data recovery:
>>
>>       1. Is there any feature of scheduled backups?
>
> You can schedule backups anyway you like :). If you are on Windows I
> believe you can use the job agent stuff in contrib. That might make your
> life easier. Otherwise you can write a batch file.
>
>
>>       1. In case there is no backup and I want to shift my data files
>>          to a new PC, how to do that?
>
> You have to move the whole cluster. (Your data directory)

... and you can only do it to a new machine of the same CPU architecture 
and major version of PostgreSQL. You can't move from, say, a 32-bit to a 
64-bit machine without a dump and reload, nor from PostgreSQL 8.3 to 
PostgreSQL 8.4.

Keep good pg_dump backups, or maintain a PITR warm spare, because that's 
the best way to shift your data. You *can* move the cluster, but it's a 
pain.

--
Craig Ringer