> The thing is you can use desktop class machines for the slave. If you do > not have spare machines I would suggest a desktop class machine with big > RAM and whatever disks you need for the DB plus an extra disk to pg_dump to > ( so pg_dump does not compete with DB for the db disks, this really kills > performance ). Replication slaves do not need that much RAM ( as the only > query it is going to run is the pg_dump ones, but desktop ram is cheap ). > We did this with a not so powerful desktop with an extra sata disk to store > the pg_dumps and it worked really well, and we are presently using two > servers, using one of the extra gigabit interfaces with a crossover cable > for the replication connection plus an extra sata disk to make hourly > pg_dumps and it works quite well. If load on the backup server becomes an issue you might be able to make incremental pg_dump's onto tmpfs. Advantage there is that the dump iteslf has effectively no write I/O overhead: you can dump to tmpfs and then [bg]zip to stable storage w/o beating up the disks, which becomes a real problem with comodity-grade hardware. -- Steven Lembark 3646 Flora Pl Workhorse Computing St Louis, MO 63110 lembark@xxxxxxxxxxx +1 888 359 3508 -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
