In this episode of “5mins of Postgres,” the host discusses the exciting addition of incremental backups to the Postgres 17 development branch. The feature allows users to perform full backups at regular intervals and then perform incremental backups that only capture the changes made since the last full backup. This approach is more efficient than relying solely on the Write Ahead Log (WAL) for recovery. The host highlights the benefits of this new feature, including reduced restoration time and the ability to perform more frequent backups. The episode also discusses the new WAL summarizer process, which aids in determining which parts of the data directory have changed. Overall, this feature promises to save time and improve backup efficiency.
https://pganalyze.com/blog/5mins-postgres-17-incremental-backups