Re: 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
takemuch longer. 

Thanks,
 Martin

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