Subject: PG Dump on 11 - Restore on 16 - is possible?

From: Durumdara <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 11:47:10 +0200

Hello!

We have to upgrade our server. The PG upgrade is impossible because of too
much data.
So we will create a new server with PG 16, and we have to migrate the
databases one by one (from a PG 11 server).

Is it possible?

Does PG16 read PG11 dumps and restore them correctly on the PG16 server?

Or is it unsupported now?

Thank you!

Best regards
dd

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From: Kashif Zeeshan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 14:53:13 +0500

Hi

> Does PG16 read PG11 dumps and restore them correctly on the PG16 server?
PG provides backward compatibility so you can restore PG11 backup to PG16.

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From: Ron Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 07:58:04 -0400

> Does PG16 read PG11 dumps and restore them correctly on the PG16 server?

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/16.0/
"See Section 19.6 <https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/upgrading.html> for
general information on migrating to new major releases."

Section 19.6: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/upgrading.html
"Current releases of the dump programs can read data from any server
version back to 9.2."

The major flaw in Section 19.6 is that it repeatedly says "use pg_dumpall",
and only mentions pg_dump once.  Don't use pg_dumpall; use pg_dump in
"directory mode" with multiple threads.  ("pg_dumpall --globals" is
critical for roles and whatnot.)

This is how I recently migrated three multi-TB PG 9.6 RHEL6 servers to PG
14 on RHEL8.

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