The consensus from previous discussions (search for 'LVM' in the archives) is essentially that it definitely *should* work, some people *do* use it successfully, but that you *must* test it thoroughly in your own setup under heavy write load before relying on it.
PG will believe it has 'crashed' when you start it from a restored snapshot, and PG is designed to recover perfectly well from crashes. If you stop the postmaster before the snapshot is taken then it will definitely work fine.
Matt
Hello,
I'm using Red Hat Enterprise v2.1 and PostgreSQL v7.3.4. Our hardware setup includes a large Storage Area Network (SAN). The systems folks are going to utilize a snapshot type backup to backup the file system. This snapshot will include PGDATA and all the PostgreSQL files. My question is if I restore this snapshot will PostgreSQL work? I know if doing a typical file system backup of PostgreSQL I must first stop the postmaster or the backup will not produce a useable PostgreSQL system. Is it necessary to stop the postmaster for this snapshot backup also?
Thanks,
Ed Murphy
The University of Arizona