On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 12:23 AM, Shilpa Sudhakar <ssudhakar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Since the wal logs keep increasing, do we take the base backup every now > and then so that we can delete the old log files? > How often do we take a base filesystem backup keeping in mind that our > systems are 24 x 7. Depends on your workload and needs. Say, if you have a policy on having ability to "go back in time" for at least 30 days, then you must keep last base backup that was done before 30 days and all the log files since then. But your primary concern should be probably recovery time after failure (your whole machine just fried ;)). What you need to do is restore last backup and reply all archival WAL logs since then. And assume worst possible situation (the machine fried just before full backup), for a weekly backups it means 7 days worth of WAL-log reply. Now, if your database is DML-heavy recovery won't be very fast, so you might want to take base backups more frequently. Or better -- set up a standby server which will constantly reply the backups. Regards, Dawid Kuroczko PS: And before setting a policy, do try test recovery and note down how much time it took. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq