Re: High-availability

Alexander Staubo wrote:
> On 6/1/07, Madison Kelly <linux@alteeve.com> wrote:
>>    After realizing that 'clustering' in the PgSQL docs means multiple
>> DBs behind one server, and NOT multple machines, I am back at square
>> one, feeling somewhat the fool. :P
>
> I remember being similarly disappointed in this rampant co-opting of
> the word "cluster" back in 7.4 or so. :) A gaggle of geese, a murder
> of crows, a cluster of databases, I guess.
>
>>    Can anyone point me to docs/websites that discuss options on
>> replicating in (as close as possible to) realtime? Ideally with load
>> balancing while both/all servers are up, and failover/resyncing when a
>> member fails and is restored.
>
> The PostgreSQL documentation gives a pretty good overview of the options:
>
>  http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/interactive/high-availability.html
>
> That said, there is to my knowledge no single, integrated product that
> will do all you ask. None are capable of anything near real-time,
> automatic failover tends to be left as an exercise for the reader, and
> there is a lot of work to get it up and running, and requires
> particular care in maintenance and monitoring once it's up.
>
> There are several commercial (Mammoth Replicator comes to mind) and
> several open-source projects. Among the open-source ones (Slony-I,
> pgpool, PGCluster), I believe Slony-I is the most mature. There are a
> few in-progress attempts (pgpool-II, PGCluster 2, PostgreSQL-R) that
> are not ready for prime time yet; of these, I believe pgpool-II is the
> most promising.
>
> As mentioned in a different thread today, work is being done to
> implement WAL-based master-slave replication, which I think should
> prove more scalable and more transparent than the current third-party
> products:
>
>  http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2007-03/msg00050.php
>
>>    I've looked at slony, but it looks more like a way to push occasional
>> copies to slaves, and isn't meant to be real time. Am I wrong by chance?
>
> Slony is indeed intended for near-real-time replication; it's
> asynchronous, so slaves always lag behind the master. The amount of
> discrepancy depends on a bunch of factors -- individual node
> performance, network performance, and system load.
>
> Alexander.

That was *exactly* the kind of link I was trying to find.

Thank you!

Madi