Re: Inherited an 18TB DB & need to backup

["Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum" <adsmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 7:52 PM Ravi Krishna <srkrishna1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Why should the backup land in S3, and not local somewhere?

Any good reason why one should pay for the additional storage and transfer costs?

Good question. The key point in my statement was "db of this size".

The problem with local backup is that space is not infinite. If your business requires you to

store backups for say 7 years, storing it locally will be a problem.  In one large financial

company I use to work, full backup was used to store old data.

(except last 30 days where WAL logs were used for a real PIT).  We use to store full backups

for about 60 days and then send older backup to an off site storage.  Nothing is free.

I remember a case where we were requested by business to restore a db of a given date two yrs

prior as they had to look at old data. It took us close to 96 hrs to give the users the required database.

S3 storage is ridiculously cheap.  Off site storage companies like Iron Mountain should find their client base

ditching them big time.

If your database is running somewhere in the cloud, then yes, that might make

sense. If your database runs in your own data center, then usually you also have

disk space available there. Plus a transfer out of your data center will take time.

There is no "per se" recommendation to move data to S3. And there might be

additional requirements like data protection laws, encryption requirements ect.

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Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
German PostgreSQL User Group
European PostgreSQL User Group - Board of Directors
Volunteer Regional Contact, Germany - PostgreSQL Project