Re: PostgreSQL and 2-node failover cluster solutions

On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 12:47:55AM +0200, Ragnar Kjørstad wrote:
> 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.

They also work very well, if not as good, with dedicated NFS storage, when
setup properly. I have built both a large Oracle server on Sun E6500 using
dedicated Netapp NFS storage (connected directly with dual Gigabit fibre)
and a medium sized pair of PostgreSQL servers using Netapp NFS again.

The advantage in the latter case is the ease of database failover between
servers. The same could be done with multi-homed scsi disk or SAN but
in this case Netapps were available. The speed is more than sufficient.

> http://www.linux-ha.org/ (heartbeat)
>
> What OS?

Linux.

> 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)

I have not had a close look at Heartbeat yet. Simplicity is one of
my requirements, so I am interested. Could you describe your setup?
I presume you are using it to failover PostgreSQL servers?

Regards,
Chris.