Re: HA for high insert volume

On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 10:06:59AM -0500, Eric Comeau wrote:
> Andrew
>
> 1) Would you use erServer in a non-DBA environment?

I'm not sure what a non-DBA environment is -- _someone_ has to be
running the database. But if your question is, "Does someone need to
hold its hand all the time?" the answer is no. It is a bit of a bear
to set up, but I gather they're fixing that for a client right now.
I suppose we have a DBA environment here; and we have needed to be a
little creative from time to time when we were first getting the
system going (we funded part of the development of it, so it was
pretty raw there for a while). But I don't think it's any more
complicated than running, say, a properly-configured mail server.

> 2) Could you point me to further info on what type of failures could
> possibly occur using the solution below with Rsync?

Sure.

http://www.ca.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/7.2/postgres/backup-file.html

You say you tested it, and it worked for you. That's nice, and it's
certainly possible; but there is a severe risk of corruption of the
second database doing things this way. Since part of the point here
is safety, doing things in a manner that is _by design_ unsafe is a
bad idea.

> Initially when I read the article below, I was skeptical it would work,
> as I said to myself how is that any different than taking an OS backup
> of the db why the db is still up and active - something you normally
> don't want to do.

Right. For the same reasons it worked for you, tarring the whole
data directory might just work, if you happened to be lucky. If you
happen not to be lucky, you will discover that when you go to restore
your backup -- a time that I, at least, don't want to learn of yet
another bit of bad luck.

A

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