Re: Seeking Suggestions for Best Practices: Archiving and Migrating Historical Data in PostgreSQL - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Holger Jakobs
Subject Re: Seeking Suggestions for Best Practices: Archiving and Migrating Historical Data in PostgreSQL
Date
Msg-id 277D875E-AC25-4EC5-B7C9-C39469FEF5F3@jakobs.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Seeking Suggestions for Best Practices: Archiving and Migrating Historical Data in PostgreSQL  (Motog Plus <mplus7535@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-admin
Copying directly using pg_dump and psql seems to be feasible. The connection to the database is usually encrypted, so no security concerns.

And the copying of the data uses the fastest method. Plus, no intermediate files are necessary.

Deleting old records has to be done separately.


Am 30. Mai 2025 12:29:54 MESZ schrieb Andy Hartman <hartman60home@gmail.com>:
I have the same situation and am very curious about a long term solution people are using.

On Fri, May 30, 2025 at 3:51 AM Motog Plus <mplus7535@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Team,

We are currently planning a data archival initiative for our production PostgreSQL databases and would appreciate suggestions or insights from the community regarding best practices and proven approaches.

**Scenario:**
- We have a few large tables (several hundred million rows) where we want to archive historical data (e.g., older than 1 year).
- The archived data should be moved to a separate PostgreSQL database (on a same or different server).
- Our goals are: efficient data movement, minimal downtime, and safe deletion from the source after successful archival.

- PostgreSQL version: 15.12
- Both source and target databases are PostgreSQL.

We explored using `COPY TO` and `COPY FROM` with CSV files, uploaded to a SharePoint or similar storage system. However, our infrastructure team raised concerns around the computational load of large CSV processing and potential security implications with file transfers.

We’d like to understand:
- What approaches have worked well for you in practice?
- Are there specific tools or strategies you’d recommend for ongoing archival?
- Any performance or consistency issues we should watch out for?

Your insights or any relevant documentation/pointers would be immensely helpful.

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

Best regards,  
Ramzy
--
Holger Jakobs, Bergisch Gladbach, Tel. +49 178 9759012

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