Book Image

PostgreSQL 12 High Availability Cookbook - Third Edition

By : Shaun Thomas
Book Image

PostgreSQL 12 High Availability Cookbook - Third Edition

By: Shaun Thomas

Overview of this book

Databases are nothing without the data they store. In the event of an outage or technical catastrophe, immediate recovery is essential. This updated edition ensures that you will learn the important concepts related to node architecture design, as well as techniques such as using repmgr for failover automation. From cluster layout and hardware selection to software stacks and horizontal scalability, this PostgreSQL cookbook will help you build a PostgreSQL cluster that will survive crashes, resist data corruption, and grow smoothly with customer demand. You’ll start by understanding how to plan a PostgreSQL database architecture that is resistant to outages and scalable, as it is the scaffolding on which everything rests. With the bedrock established, you'll cover the topics that PostgreSQL database administrators need to know to manage a highly available cluster. This includes configuration, troubleshooting, monitoring and alerting, backups through proxies, failover automation, and other considerations that are essential for a healthy PostgreSQL cluster. Later, you’ll learn to use multi-master replication to maximize server availability. Later chapters will guide you through managing major version upgrades without downtime. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to build an efficient and adaptive PostgreSQL 12 database cluster.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Deciding when to use third-party tools

Managing PostgreSQL backups need not be difficult or require third-party software tooling. In many small or even medium-size environments, it may be perfectly acceptable to rely on the provided pg_basebackup utility.

Yet this assumption rapidly breaks down upon the introduction of even small amounts of complexity. Creating a one-time backup is only a tiny portion of backing up a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). A complete backup solution will also manage WAL files to orchestrate Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR), restore a backup to a remote location, and target multiple servers if necessary. There's a lot of room for accidents, and any mistake can result in a useless backup or a lost production environment.

While much of this can be scripted, why reinvent the wheel? These tools exist because someone took the time to solve...