The procedure for restoring a database from parallel backup files depends on a few factors. To determine the restore procedure to use, determine your answers to the following questions:

1.Where are your backup files located? If your backup files reside in their original location on the segment hosts where they were created by gp_dump, you can do a simple restore using gp_restore. If you have moved your backup files off of your Greenplum array, for example to an archive server, use gpdbrestore.

2.Do you need to restore your entire system, or just your data? If you have your Greenplum Database up and running and just need to restore your data, you can do a restore using gp_restore or gpdbrestore. If you have lost your entire array and need to rebuild the entire system from backup, use gpinitsystem.

3.Are you restoring to a system with the same number of segment instances as your backup set? If you are restoring to an array with the same number of segment hosts and segment instances per host, use gp_restore or gpdbrestore. If you are migrating to a different array configuration, you must do a non-parallel restore.