Re: Warm Standby Setup Documentation

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Ogden <lists(at)darkstatic(dot)com> wrote:

> I have looked all over but could not find any detailed docs on setting up a
> warm standby solution using PostgreSQL 8.4. I do know of
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/warm-standby.html but was
> wondering if there was a more detailed document on this topic.
>
> Are people using this as a viable backup/hot spare solution? How has it
> worked out?
>
> Thank you
>
> Ogden
>

We use it, it works pretty well, although it's a bit of a pain to set up the
first time. We have two spares, one which is an equivalent sized machine we
use for failover, and one which is a smaller machine that we use for
worst-case-scenario file system snapshots/backups.

The one thing you should be aware of is that when you fail over, your spare
has no spares. I have not found a way around this problem yet. So, when
you fail over, there is a window where you have no backups while you're
building the new spares. This can be pretty nerve wracking if your database
is like ours and it takes 3-6 hours to bring a new spare online from
scratch.

I was able to build out our solution reading the docs and asking questions
on the mailing list. The information is in the docs, you just have to read
it a few times for it to sink in.

Bryan