EnterpriseDB/barman release/3.11.0

on GitHub

Version 3.11.0 - 22 August 2024

Features

• Add support for Postgres 17+ incremental backups. This major feature is
  composed of several small changes:

  • Add --incremental command-line option to barman backup command. This is
    used to specify the parent backup when taking an incremental backup. The
    parent can be either a full backup or another incremental backup.

  • Add latest-full shortcut backup ID. Along with latest, this can be used
    as a shortcut to select the parent backup for an incremental backup. While
    latest takes the latest backup independently if it is full or incremental,
    latest-full takes the latest full backup.

  • barman keep command can only be applied to full backups when
    backup_method = postgres. If a full backup has incremental backups that
    depend on it, all of the incrementals are also kept by Barman.

  • When deleting a backup all the incremental backups depending on it, if any,
    are also removed.

  • Retention policies do not take incremental backups into consideration. As
    incremental backups cannot be recovered without having the complete chain of
    backups available up to the full backup, only full backups account for
    retention policies.

  • barman recover needs to combine the full backup with the chain of incremental
    backups when recovering. The new CLI option --local-staging-path, and the
    corresponding local_staging_path configuration option, are used to specify
    the path in the Barman host where the backups will be combined when recovering
    an incremental backup.

• Changes to barman show-backup output:

  • Add the “Estimated cluster size” field. It's useful to have an estimation
    of the data directory size of a cluster when restoring a backup. It’s
    particularly useful when recovering compressed backups or incremental
    backups, situations where the size of the backup doesn’t reflect the size of the
    data directory in Postgres. In JSON format, this is stored as
    cluster_size.

  • Add the “WAL summarizer” field. This field shows if summarize_wal was
    enabled in Postgres at the time the backup was taken. In JSON format, this
    is stored as server_information.summarize_wal. This field is omitted for
    Postgres 16 and older.

  • Add “Data checksums” field. This shows if data_checkums was enabled in
    Postgres at the time the backup was taken. In JSON format, this is stored as
    server_information.data_checksums.

  • Add the “Backup method” field. This shows the backup method used for this
    backup. In JSON format, this is stored as
    base_backup_information.backup_method.

  • Rename the field “Disk Usage” as “Backup Size”. The latter provides a more
    comprehensive name which represents the size of the backup in the Barman
    host. The JSON field under base_backup_information was also renamed from
    disk_usage to backup_size.

  • Add the “WAL size” field. This shows the size of the WALs required by the
    backup. In JSON format, this is stored as
    base_backup_information.wal_size.

  • Refactor the field “Incremental size”. It is now named “Resources saving”
    and it now shows an estimation of resources saved when taking incremental
    backups with rsync or pg_basebackup. It compares the backup size with
    the estimated cluster size to estimate the amount of disk and network
    resources that were saved by taking an incremental backup. In JSON format,
    the field was renamed from incremental_size to resource_savings under base_backup_information.

  • Add the system_id field to the JSON document. This field contains the
    system identifier of Postgres. It was present in console format, but was
    missing in JSON format.

  • Add fields related with Postgres incremental backups:

    • “Backup type”: indicates if the Postgres backup is full or incremental. In
      JSON format, this is stored as backup_type under base_backup_information.

    • “Root backup”: the ID of the full backup that is the root of a chain of
      one or more incremental backups. In JSON format, this is stored as
      catalog_information.root_backup_id.

    • “Parent backup”: the ID of the full or incremental backup from which this
      incremental backup was taken. In JSON format, this is stored as
      catalog_information.parent_backup_id.

    • “Children Backup(s)”: the IDs of the incremental backups that were taken
      with this backup as the parent. In JSON format, this is stored as
      catalog_information.children_backup_ids.

    • “Backup chain size”: the number of backups in the chain from this
      incremental backup up to the root backup. In JSON format, this is
      stored as catalog_information.chain_size.

• Changes to barman list-backup output:

  • It now includes the backup type in the JSON output, which can be either
    rsync for backups taken with rsync, full or incremental for backups
    taken with pg_basebackup, or snapshot for cloud snapshots. When printing
    to the console the backup type is represented by the corresponding labels
    R, F, I or S.

  • Remove tablespaces information from the output. That was bloating the
    output. Tablespaces information can still be found in the output of
    barman show-backup.

• Always set a timestamp with a time zone when configuring
  recovery_target_time through barman recover. Previously, if no time zone
  was explicitly set through --target-time, Barman would configure
  recovery_target_time without a time zone in Postgres. Without a time zone,
  Postgres would assume whatever is configured through timezone GUC in
  Postgres. From now on Barman will issue a warning and configure
  recovery_target_time with the time zone of the Barman host if no time zone
  is set by the user through --target-time option.

• When recovering a backup with the “no get wal” approach and --target-lsn is set,
  copy only the WAL files required to reach the configured target. Previously
  Barman would copy all the WAL files from its archive to Postgres.

• When recovering a backup with the “no get wal” approach and --target-immediate
  is set, copy only the WAL files required to reach the consistent point.
  Previously Barman would copy all the WAL files from its archive to Postgres.

• barman-wal-restore now moves WALs from the spool directory to pg_wal
  instead of copying them. This can improve performance if the spool directory
  and the pg_wal directory are in the same partition.

• barman check-backup now shows the reason why a backup was marked as FAILED
  in the output and logs. Previously for a user to know why the backup was
  marked as FAILED, they would need to run barman show-backup command.

• Add configuration option aws_await_snapshots_timeout and the corresponding
  --aws-await-snapshots-timeout command-line option on barman-cloud-backup.
  This specifies the timeout in seconds to wait for snapshot backups to reach
  the completed state.

• Add a keep-alive mechanism to rsync-based backups. Previously the Postgres
  session created by Barman to run pg_backup_start() and pg_backup_stop() would
  stay idle for as long as the base backup copy would take. That could lead to a
  firewall or router dropping the connection because it was idle for a long
  time. The keep-alive mechanism sends heartbeat queries to Postgres
  through that connection, thus reducing the likelihood of a connection
  getting dropped. The interval between heartbeats can be controlled through the new
  configuration option keepalive_interval and the corresponding CLI
  option --keepalive-interval of the barman backup command.

Bug fixes

• When recovering a backup with the “no get wal” approach and --target-time
  set, copy all WAL files. Previously Barman would attempt to “guess” the WAL
  files required by Postgres to reach the configured target time. However,
  the mechanism was not robust enough as it was based on the stats of the WAL
  file in the Barman host (more specifically the creation time). For example:
  if there were archiving or streaming lag between Postgres and Barman, that
  could be enough for recovery to fail because Barman would miss to copy all
  the required WAL files due to the weak check based on file stats.

• Pin python-snappy to 0.6.1 when running Barman through Python 3.6 or
  older. Newer versions of python-snappy require cramjam version 2.7.0 or
  newer, and these are only available for Python 3.7 or newer.

• barman receive-wal now exits with code 1 instead of 0 in the following
  cases:

  • Being unable to run with --reset flag because pg_receivewal is
    running.

  • Being unable to start pg_receivewal process because it is already
    running.

• Fix and improve information about Python in barman diagnose output:

  • The command now makes sure to use the same Python interpreter under which
    Barman is installed when outputting the Python version through
    python_ver JSON key. Previously, if an environment had multiple Python
    installations and/or virtual environments, the output could eventually be
    misleading, as it could be fetched from a different Python interpreter.

  • Added a python_executable key to the JSON output. That contains the path
    to the exact Python interpreter being used by Barman.