Re: PostgreSQL and 2-node failover cluster solutions

On Fri, Oct 04, 2002 at 07:05:28PM +0100, Chris Miles wrote:
> Hi, we have 2 PostgreSQL servers running multiple instances and would like
> to automate failover between them. We store db data on NFS storage on
> dedicated Netapps. We can currently perform manual failover by dropping
> the instance on one server and starting in on the other (the init scripts
> handle bringing virtual IP up/down and the NFS volume is automounted as
> needed).

Uh; why would you want to do that?
Databases work much better with local storage than over NFS.

> My question to you: are there any simple, reliable and free cluster/fail-over
> (whatever you'd like to call it) solutions that you know of to automate
> the above? I'm prepared to give a bit on the simple and free if necessary,
> although reliability is pretty important.

http://www.linux-ha.org/ (heartbeat)

> Many other offerings floating around are either expensive commercial, or
> overly complex requiring kernel patching and complicated setups.

What OS?

There are a very large number of linux failover software packages;
commercial and free. They all have their pros and cons - I prefer
heartbeat because of it's simplicity. (the main drawback of heartbeat is
that it does not yet implement service-monitoring - but you can do that
outside heartbeat if you want to)

--
Ragnar Kjørstad