Book Image

PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook

By : Shaun Thomas
Book Image

PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook

By: Shaun Thomas

Overview of this book

A comprehensive series of dependable recipes to design, build, and implement a PostgreSQL server architecture free of common pitfalls that can operate for years to come. Each chapter is packed with instructions and examples to simplify even highly complex database operations. If you are a PostgreSQL DBA working on Linux systems who want a database that never gives up, this book is for you. If you've ever experienced a database outage, restored from a backup, spent hours trying to repair a malfunctioning cluster, or simply want to guarantee system stability, this book is definitely for you.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
11
Index

Introduction

Thus far in this book, we've discussed quite an array of functionality and methodology dedicated to keeping PostgreSQL systems online. By now, we have a burgeoning menagerie of replication utilities, system monitoring tools, connection pooling layers, and even a handful of troubleshooting tips. What could we possibly cover next?

As it turns out, simply installing PostgreSQL on a server can be done too early. Presuming that we have all of the hardware and software we discussed earlier, our servers are still missing the following three things:

  • The ability to synchronize data to two servers simultaneously
  • The capacity to freeze data to prevent changes for backup purposes
  • A durable filesystem designed for multiprocess I/O

There are several solutions for each of these missing elements, yet we've settled on three in particular: DRBD, LVM, and XFS. Let's explore a bit about each of these technologies and why we've chosen them to represent what we've deemed our...