Book Image

PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook

By : Shaun Thomas
Book Image

PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook

By: Shaun Thomas

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (17 chapters)
PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Configuration – managing scary settings


When it comes to highly available database servers and configuration, a very important aspect is whether or not a changed setting requires a database restart before taking effect. While it is true that many of these are important enough and they should be set correctly before starting the server, our requirements evolve sometimes.

If or when this happens, there is no alternative but to restart the PostgreSQL service. There are, of course, steps we can take to avoid this fate. Perhaps, an existing server didn't need the WAL output to be compatible with hot standby servers. Maybe, we need to move the logfile, enable WAL archival, or increase the amount of connections.

These are all scenarios that require us to restart PostgreSQL. We can avoid this by identifying these settings early and paying special attention to them.

Getting ready

PostgreSQL has a lot of useful views for DBAs to get information about the database and its current state. For this section...