Base backup
A base backup is for rehosting to the AWS Cloud without changing your database and Linux versions. Base backups are applicable to databases smaller than 500 GB. To perform a base backup, you must use Direct Connect to set up a direct link between your on-premises PostgreSQL database and the AWS Cloud.
Architecture
The following diagram shows the architecture for migrating an on-premises PostgreSQL database to the AWS Cloud by using a base backup.
The diagram shows the following workflow:
Use the pg_basebackup
PostgreSQL utility to take a physical backup of the data from your on-premises database, and then copy that backup to the Amazon EC2 data directory location in the AWS Cloud. Complete the PostgreSQL migration.
Perform a VACUUM
operation on the database. Validate your data.
Point your application to the new PostgreSQL database on the EC2 instance.
Limitations
We recommend that you consider the following limitations of using base backups before starting your migration:
A dump and restore can be time-consuming for larger databases (that is, databases from 50 GB to 300 GB).
This option requires complete database downtime.
A significant amount of diskspace is required on the server to take backups and then copy the backups to Amazon EC2.
