Greenplum gpcrondump

There are a variety if methods to backup and restore information from Greenplum. The most common tools, which are provided with Greenplum, are gpcrondump and gpdbrestore.  These tools coordinate activities within the cluster in order to produce and ingest backup files.

The Greenplum Database parallel dump utility gpcrondump backs up the Greenplum master instance and each active segment instance at the same time.

By default, gpcrondump creates dump files in the gp_dump subdirectory.

Several dump files are created for the master, containing database information such as DDL statements, the Greenplum system catalog tables, and metadata files. gpcrondump creates one dump file for each segment, which contains commands to recreate the data on that segment.

You can perform full or incremental backups. To restore a database to its state when an incremental backup was made, you will need to restore the previous full backup and all subsequent incremental backups.

Each file created for a backup begins with a 14-digit timestamp key that identifies the backup set the file belongs to.

gpcrondump can be run directly in a terminal on the master host, or you can add it to crontab on the master host to schedule regular backups.

These exercises will walk through how to create a full backup of your database and then restore a table.

To run a full backup, use “gpcrondump -x database -u /path/for/backup -a”. This will backup the entire database to the directory given without prompting the user.

$ gpcrondump -x tutorial -u /tmp -a -r

20151021:18:15:08:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Starting gpcrondump with args: -x tutorial -u /tmp -a -r
20151021:18:15:09:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Directory /tmp/db_dumps/20151021 exists
20151021:18:15:09:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Checked /tmp on master
20151021:18:15:10:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Configuring for single database dump
20151021:18:15:10:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Validating disk space
20151021:18:15:10:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Adding compression parameter
20151021:18:15:10:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Adding --no-expand-children
20151021:18:15:10:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump process command line gp_dump -p 5432 -U gpadmin --gp-d=/tmp/db_dumps/20151021 --gp-r=/tmp/db_dumps/20151021 --gp-s=p --gp-k=20151021181509 --no-lock --gp-c --no-expand-children tutorial
20151021:18:15:10:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Starting Dump process
20151021:18:15:14:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Releasing pg_class lock
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump process returned exit code 0
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Timestamp key = 20151021181509
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Checked master status file and master dump file.
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump status report
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:----------------------------------------------------
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Target database                          = tutorial
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump subdirectory                        = 20151021
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump type                                = Full database
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Clear old dump directories               = Off
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump start time                          = 18:15:09
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump end time                            = 18:15:30
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Status                                   = COMPLETED
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump key                                 = 20151021181509
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Dump file compression                    = On
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Vacuum mode type                         = Off
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-Exit code zero, no warnings generated
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:----------------------------------------------------
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[WARNING]:-Found neither /usr/local/greenplum-db/./bin/mail_contacts nor /home/gpadmin/mail_contacts
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[WARNING]:-Unable to send dump email notification
20151021:18:15:30:068072 gpcrondump:gpdb-sandbox:gpadmin-[INFO]:-To enable email notification, create /usr/local/greenplum-db/./bin/mail_contacts or /home/gpadmin/mail_contacts containing required email addresses

This runs a full backup of the database created during the previous exercises.

To view the backups:

ls -al /tmp/db_dumps