Re: Scalability Design Questions

Yes, I realize that scaling must be a large and complicated topic. And that
PostgresSQL is not as scaleable as Oracle etc.

I know after reading your post that Postgres cannot match RAC. I'm still not
sure if Postgres can operate a database from more than one box, at all. If
it can, how? I mean is there a module for this, or is that capability native
to postgres? PGCluster on PGFoundry seems to be more about replication.
Searching for 'cluster' gets a lot of results but they're mostly about the
cluster that postgresql creates at installation, the 'parent' of regular
databases.

If I have a database that records 100 trx a second, I'm pretty sure postgres
would support splitting off aggregation services to another box. But what if
the 'main' database has to keep scaling? Can the 'main' database be
supported by multiple boxes?


Scott Marlowe-2 wrote:
>
> On 9/8/07, novnov <novnovice@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> What happens when a database needs to scale beyond a single server? Is
>> this
>> something PostgreSQL can do?
>>
>> Further, does a database need to be designed differently if it's going to
>> be
>> used on more than one server? I know there are many issues that might
>> effect
>> a database's ability to scale; but specifically, will a well designed
>> single
>> server database be easily adapted to multiple servers, or will the design
>> have to be adjusted?
>
>
> There are so many ways in which an application may need to scale.
> What if your data is mostly static, but has 100,000 users an hour or a
> minute hitting it (think google, news sites).  what if you've got to
> handle 1,000 airline reservations a minute?  What if you've got to
> handle 500 inserts per second, but only have to aggregate the data at
> the end of every hour and then throw it away?
>
> The way you scale depends very much on what you're doing.
>
> While the idea of just throwing more machines in a cluster that act as
> one big machine seems simple, the actual implementation and software
> to make that happen is not, and it's why Oracle can charge as much as
> the national budget of a small island nation to implement a large RAC
> cluster.
>
> PostgreSQL can handle a lot of very large jobs, but it really doesn't
> have anything as complex, sophisticated (and trouble pron I might add)
> as oracle's RAC.  Start cutting checks for $200,000 to a few
> developers and you might start getting somewhere on it though.  :)
>
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