I have looked all over but could not find any detailed docs on setting up a warm standby solution using PostgreSQL 8.4. I do know of http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/warm-standby.html but was wondering if there was a more detailed document on this topic.
Are people using this as a viable backup/hot spare solution? How has it worked out?
Thank you
Ogden
We use it, it works pretty well, although it's a bit of a pain to set up the first time. We have two spares, one which is an equivalent sized machine we use for failover, and one which is a smaller machine that we use for worst-case-scenario file system snapshots/backups.
The one thing you should be aware of is that when you fail over, your spare has no spares. I have not found a way around this problem yet. So, when you fail over, there is a window where you have no backups while you're building the new spares. This can be pretty nerve wracking if your database is like ours and it takes 3-6 hours to bring a new spare online from scratch.
I was able to build out our solution reading the docs and asking questions on the mailing list. The information is in the docs, you just have to read it a few times for it to sink in.
Bryan
