I'm working on a project that requires on-demand creation
of a fresh database as quick as possible (seconds).
Essentially, this is a build server that will require a cloned
instance of Postgres to run unit tests on. So the pattern of
use would be:
- Build is triggered
- New postgres instance is created and connection details
are provided to build server
- Build runs unit tests that connect to the database
- Build completes, database is no longer needed and can be
thrown away
The "template" database will be approximately 50gb in
size so my question is what is the fastest way to spin up
new instances of this database? I've thought of using
"CREATE DATABASE WITH TEMPLATE..." but that takes too long.
I've also thought about cloning the $PGDATA directory,
changing the port number in postgresql.conf, and starting a
new instance of postgres pointing to the cloned data
directory.
Both of these methods take longer than I'd like, so I'm
wondering if anyone else has this use case and what methods
they've used to solve this.
Thanks,
Arjun
