PostgreSQL: 8.2.4
We currently backup all of our database tables per schema using pg_dump every half hour. We have been noticing that the database performance has been very poor during the backup process. How can I improve the performance?
Server Specs:
Dedicated DB server
Database takes up 8.0 Gig of disk space
2 Xeon 5160 dual cores 3.0
16 G of memory
Two disks in raid 1 are used for the OS, database and backups. SAS 10,000 RPM drives.
OS: Linux AS 4.x 64 bit
shared_buffers = 1 GB
work_mem = 20MB
max_fsm_pages = 524288
random_page_cost=1.0
effective_cache_size=16GB
max_connections=150
All other settings are the default settings.
I have tried doing backups to a second set of disks but the performance only improved somewhat.
Does anyone have advice on how to improve my performance during backup? Would adding two quad core processors improve performance?
Thanks,
Lance Campbell
Project Manager/Software Architect
Web Services at Public Affairs
University of Illinois
217.333.0382
http://webservices.uiuc.edu