Re: Migration of PGDATA

Only out of curiosity, is your current server 32 bit or 64?
Are you migrating 32 to 32 or 64 to 64?

Thank you

Renato

Renato Oliveira
Systems Administrator
e-mail: renato(dot)oliveira(at)grant(dot)co(dot)uk

Tel: +44 (0)1763 260811
Fax: +44 (0)1763 262410
http://www.grant.co.uk/

Grant Instruments (Cambridge) Ltd

Company registered in England, registration number 658133

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-----Original Message-----

From: pgsql-admin-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org [mailto:pgsql-admin-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of "Martin Münstermann"
Sent: 29 March 2010 11:50
To: Robert Joosten; pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Migration of PGDATA

Hi,

> > is it safe to move the PGDATA directory from one system to another when
> migrating from one operating system to another?
> > For example: migrating from Debian to RHEL, or from RHEL4 to RHEL5?
> > The database is of course shutdown properly, and the PG major versions
> match.
> > Or is a dump/restore necessary in these cases?
>
> Besides the other reply, take into account little- versus bigendian
> changes if you switch hardware.

Good point. But as we stick to Linux on Intel, we expect no problems there.

> But just out of curiosity: why propose against a dump/restore ? I mean:
> when I upgrade between major releases I dump as well, as it is
> recommended. I never ran into trouble, you know.

It's a question of migration duration aka downtime.
Our PGDATA resides on a SAN, so moving/migrating the directory takes a couple of seconds. A dump/restore cycle would take much longer.

Thanks,
Martin

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