pg_probackup
is a utility to manage backup and recovery of PostgreSQL database clusters. It is designed to perform periodic backups of the PostgreSQL instance that enable you to restore the server in case of a failure.
The utility is compatible with:
- PostgreSQL 9.5, 9.6, 10, 11, 12, 13;
As compared to other backup solutions, pg_probackup
offers the following benefits that can help you implement different backup strategies and deal with large amounts of data:
- Incremental backup: page-level incremental backup allows you to save disk space, speed up backup and restore. With three different incremental modes, you can plan the backup strategy in accordance with your data flow.
- Incremental restore: page-level incremental restore allows you dramatically speed up restore by reusing valid unchanged pages in destination directory.
- Merge: using this feature allows you to implement "incrementally updated backups" strategy, eliminating the need to do periodical full backups.
- Validation: automatic data consistency checks and on-demand backup validation without actual data recovery
- Verification: on-demand verification of PostgreSQL instance with the
checkdb
command. - Retention: managing WAL archive and backups in accordance with retention policy. You can configure retention policy based on recovery time or the number of backups to keep, as well as specify
time to live
(TTL) for a particular backup. Expired backups can be merged or deleted. - Parallelization: running backup, restore, merge, delete, verificaton and validation processes on multiple parallel threads
- Compression: storing backup data in a compressed state to save disk space
- Deduplication: saving disk space by not copying unchanged non-data files, such as
_vm
or_fsm
- Remote operations: backing up PostgreSQL instance located on a remote system or restoring a backup remotely
- Backup from standby: avoid extra load on master by taking backups from a standby server
- External directories: backing up files and directories located outside of the PostgreSQL
data directory
(PGDATA), such as scripts, configuration files, logs, or SQL dump files. - Backup Catalog: get list of backups and corresponding meta information in plain text or JSON formats
- Archive catalog: getting the list of all WAL timelines and the corresponding meta information in plain text or JSON formats
- Partial Restore: restore only the specified databases or exclude the specified databases from restore.
To manage backup data, pg_probackup
creates a backup catalog. This directory stores all backup files with additional meta information, as well as WAL archives required for point-in-time recovery. You can store backups for different instances in separate subdirectories of a single backup catalog.
Using pg_probackup
, you can take full or incremental backups:
Full
backups contain all the data files required to restore the database cluster from scratch.Incremental
backups only store the data that has changed since the previous backup. It allows to decrease the backup size and speed up backup operations.pg_probackup
supports the following modes of incremental backups:PAGE
backup. In this mode,pg_probackup
scans all WAL files in the archive from the moment the previous full or incremental backup was taken. Newly created backups contain only the pages that were mentioned in WAL records. This requires all the WAL files since the previous backup to be present in the WAL archive. If the size of these files is comparable to the total size of the database cluster files, speedup is smaller, but the backup still takes less space.DELTA
backup. In this mode,pg_probackup
read all data files in PGDATA directory and only those pages, that where changed since previous backup, are copied. Continuous archiving is not necessary for it to operate. Also this mode could impose read-only I/O pressure equal toFull
backup.PTRACK
backup. In this mode, PostgreSQL tracks page changes on the fly. Continuous archiving is not necessary for it to operate. Each time a relation page is updated, this page is marked in a specialPTRACK
bitmap for this relation. As one page requires just one bit in thePTRACK
fork, such bitmaps are quite small. Tracking implies some minor overhead on the database server operation, but speeds up incremental backups significantly.
Regardless of the chosen backup type, all backups taken with pg_probackup
support the following strategies of WAL delivery:
Autonomous backups
streams via replication protocol all the WAL files required to restore the cluster to a consistent state at the time the backup was taken. Even if continuous archiving is not set up, the required WAL segments are included into the backup.Archive backups
rely on continuous archiving.
PTRACK
backup support provided via following options:
- vanilla PostgreSQL 12,13 with ptrack extension
- Postgres Pro Standard 9.6, 10, 11, 12
- Postgres Pro Enterprise 9.6, 10, 11, 12
pg_probackup
currently has the following limitations:
- The server from which the backup was taken and the restored server must be compatible by the block_size and wal_block_size parameters and have the same major release number.
- Remote backup via ssh on Windows currently is not supported.
- When running remote operations via ssh, remote and local pg_probackup versions must be the same.
Documentation can be found at github and Postgres Professional documentation
- Stable version state can be found under the respective release tag.
master
branch contains minor fixes that are planned to the nearest minor release.- Upcoming major release is developed in a release branch i.e.
release_2_5
.
For detailed release plans check Milestones
Installers are available in release assets. Latests.
#DEB Ubuntu|Debian Packages
sudo echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/deb/ $(lsb_release -cs) main-$(lsb_release -cs)" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup.list
sudo wget -O - https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/keys/GPG-KEY-PG_PROBACKUP | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pg-probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
sudo apt-get install pg-probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}-dbg
#DEB-SRC Packages
sudo echo "deb-src [arch=amd64] https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/deb/ $(lsb_release -cs) main-$(lsb_release -cs)" >>\
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup.list && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get source pg-probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
#RPM Centos Packages
rpm -ivh https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/keys/pg_probackup-repo-centos.noarch.rpm
yum install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
yum install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}-debuginfo
#RPM RHEL Packages
rpm -ivh https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/keys/pg_probackup-repo-rhel.noarch.rpm
yum install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
yum install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}-debuginfo
#RPM Oracle Linux Packages
rpm -ivh https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/keys/pg_probackup-repo-oraclelinux.noarch.rpm
yum install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
yum install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}-debuginfo
#SRPM Centos|RHEL|OracleLinux Packages
yumdownloader --source pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
#RPM SUSE|SLES Packages
zypper install --allow-unsigned-rpm -y https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/keys/pg_probackup-repo-suse.noarch.rpm
zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys install -y pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
zypper install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}-debuginfo
#SRPM SUSE|SLES Packages
zypper si pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
#RPM ALT Linux 7
sudo echo "rpm https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/rpm/latest/altlinux-p7 x86_64 vanilla" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}-debuginfo
#RPM ALT Linux 8
sudo echo "rpm https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/rpm/latest/altlinux-p8 x86_64 vanilla" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}-debuginfo
#RPM ALT Linux 9
sudo echo "rpm https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup/rpm/latest/altlinux-p9 x86_64 vanilla" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{13,12,11,10,9.6,9.5}-debuginfo
#DEB Ubuntu|Debian Packages
sudo echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup-forks/deb/ $(lsb_release -cs) main-$(lsb_release -cs)" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup-forks.list
sudo wget -O - https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup-forks/keys/GPG-KEY-PG_PROBACKUP | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pg-probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}
sudo apt-get install pg-probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}-dbg
#RPM Centos Packages
rpm -ivh https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup-forks/keys/pg_probackup-repo-forks-centos.noarch.rpm
yum install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}
yum install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}-debuginfo
#RPM RHEL Packages
rpm -ivh https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup-forks/keys/pg_probackup-repo-forks-rhel.noarch.rpm
yum install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}
yum install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}-debuginfo
#RPM Oracle Linux Packages
rpm -ivh https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup-forks/keys/pg_probackup-repo-forks-oraclelinux.noarch.rpm
yum install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}
yum install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}-debuginfo
#RPM ALT Linux 7
sudo echo "rpm https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup-forks/rpm/latest/altlinux-p7 x86_64 forks" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup_forks.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}-debuginfo
#RPM ALT Linux 8
sudo echo "rpm https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup-forks/rpm/latest/altlinux-p8 x86_64 forks" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup_forks.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}-debuginfo
#RPM ALT Linux 9
sudo echo "rpm https://repo.postgrespro.ru/pg_probackup-forks/rpm/latest/altlinux-p9 x86_64 forks" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pg_probackup_forks.list && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}
sudo apt-get install pg_probackup-{std,ent}-{12,11,10,9.6}-debuginfo
Once you have pg_probackup
installed, complete the setup.
To compile pg_probackup
, you must have a PostgreSQL installation and raw source tree. Execute this in the module's directory:
make USE_PGXS=1 PG_CONFIG=<path_to_pg_config> top_srcdir=<path_to_PostgreSQL_source_tree>
The alternative way, without using the PGXS infrastructure, is to place pg_probackup
source directory into contrib
directory and build it there. Example:
cd <path_to_PostgreSQL_source_tree> && git clone https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_probackup contrib/pg_probackup && cd contrib/pg_probackup && make
Currently pg_probackup can be build using only MSVC 2013. Build PostgreSQL using pgwininstall or PostgreSQL instruction with MSVC 2013. If zlib support is needed, src/tools/msvc/config.pl must contain path to directory with compiled zlib. Example
CALL "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcvarsall" amd64
SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Perl64\bin
SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\msys64\usr\bin
gen_probackup_project.pl C:\path_to_postgresql_source_tree
This module available under the license similar to PostgreSQL.
Do not hesitate to post your issues, questions and new ideas at the issues page.
Postgres Professional, Moscow, Russia.
pg_probackup
utility is based on pg_arman
, that was originally written by NTT and then developed and maintained by Michael Paquier.