Hi Ken, please don't put your answer at the top.
> On 22. Jun, 2020, at 17:46, Wolff, Ken L <ken.l.wo...@lmco.com> wrote: > > So apologies if this is a stupid question but there's obviously been a lot of > discussion on this issue. Was a consensus ever reached on the following? > > If a Postgres database (both data and WAL) is located on one NetApp volume, > meaning a snapshot should capture everything at exactly the same time with > the required atomicity, do we still need to put the database into backup mode > beforehand (and take it out afterwards)? If we don't put Postgres into > backup mode first, will we still be able to use the WALs to roll transactions > forward or would we be limited to only the point-in-time at which that > snapshot was taken? you're absolutely fine with that as long as PGDATA and the pg_wal directory are located on the same volume. But you can't perform a PITR. If you don't do pg_start_backup() then you won't be able to perform a PITR but if that's an "I-will-*DEFINITELY*-never-need-a-PITR" situation, then that's ok. Otherwise, from what I learned, you do a pg_start_backup(), then do the volume snapshot, and finally the pg_stop_backup() saving the output of the latter for PITR purposes. Cheers, Paul