Postgres Sql - On Demand Backup "atomicity"

[Piny Houri]

Hi guys,

Was wondering if the on demand backup is atomic - i.e. once I start it, it freezes the current state and any changes after starting (and before finishing) are not reflected?

I.e. do I need to wait for the backup to finish before running my risky operations or I can just go ahead once it's acknowledged?

[diogoa...@google.com]

The recommendation to perform the backups when your instance runs fewer operations is related to performance. Changes are not recommended because the backup is going to use resources. 

In this document, it tells that writes and other operations are unaffected, which means that writes and other operations will not be part of the backed up data. So, the on-demand backup is atomic and it is not recommended to run your risky operations at the same time as they may impact the use of resources. Check this Stack Overflow post or more details on Postgres backups.