PostgreSQL 11 Administration Cookbook

There's more…

Compressing backups is often considered as a way to reduce the size of the backup for storage. Even mild compression can use large amounts of CPU. In some cases, this might offset network transfer costs, so there isn't any hard rule as to whether compression is always good.

Compression for WAL files from physical backups is a common practice. Physical backups can be compressed in various ways, depending on the exact backup mechanism used. By default, the custom dump format for logical backups will be compressed. Even when compressed, the objects can be accessed individually if required.

Using --compress with script dumps will result in a compressed text file, just as if you had dumped the file and then compressed it. Access ...