From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Rob Richardson <RDRichardson@rad-con.com>
cc: "pgsql-admin@postgresql.org" <pgsql-admin@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Slow backups over VPN
In-reply-to: 
 <67D108EDFAD3C148A593E6ED7DCB4BBDD844867A@RADCONWIN2K8PDC.radcon.local>
References: 
 <67D108EDFAD3C148A593E6ED7DCB4BBDD844867A@RADCONWIN2K8PDC.radcon.local>
Comments: In-reply-to Rob Richardson <RDRichardson@rad-con.com>
 message dated "Tue, 29 Apr 2014 18:13:37 -0000"
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 18:14:17 -0400
Message-ID: <28744.1398809657@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Sender: pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org

Rob Richardson <RDRichardson@rad-con.com> writes:
> I have a tiny database that I need to take frequent backups of.  The database is on a test server in our office.  When I'm at the office, backups take only a few seconds.  But when I am working from home, connecting to the office through a SonicWall VPN, backups take a few minutes.  Other data transfer operations, like file copies, are reasonably fast.  I've seen this behavior for databases using PostgreSQL8.4, 9.0 and 9.3.  Can you suggest any way that I might get backups to be reasonably fast?

Does your "tiny" database contain lots of small objects (functions,
perhaps)?

I'm just guessing here, but I wonder if you aren't getting killed by
round-trip latency.  pg_dump issues quite a lot of per-object queries,
so if there are lots of objects, high latency would pose a problem even
if the one-way throughput is reasonably fast.  It would be interesting
to find out the round trip time through your VPN as measured by, say,
ping.

If this theory is correct, there's probably no easy fix :-(.

			regards, tom lane


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