On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 11:51, Bryce Nesbitt wrote:
> I'm interested in creating a mirror database, for use in case one our
> primary machine goes down. Can people here help sort out which of the
> several replication projects is most viable?
>
> As far as I can tell, the winner is slony1 at
> http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/slony1/projdisplay.php , but there
> are several contenders.
>
> ------------------------------------------
>
> The needs here are very relaxed. We have one main postmaster which runs
> 24x7x365. There's another machine nearby that can accept a log or
> journal of some sort. The alternate never needs DB access, except in
> case of main machine failure, and then we can take up to 15 minutes to
> switch over and rebuild the DB. "No-lost transaction" is far more
> important than switch time.
>
> Anyone here using replication or transaction journaling? Has it proved
> reliable, easy to maintain?
You might want to look at pgpool in mirror replication mode as well.
It's got some limitations due to it's query shipping nature, but may
give you what you need. It knows how to switch off from the dead server
and keep running on the one good one. It's solid software though.
Mammoth may be a better option for you. It's not that horribly
expensive, and setup is supposed to be a snap.
If you use slony, you might want to look at frontending it with pgpool
which makes switching the servers around a little easier, as you can do
it in pgpool instead of your app layer.
Lots of choices. Hard to say which is right.
I really like slony, and use it at work. I'm quite happy with it.