Scott Marlowe <smarlowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > Also, I wonder how well both databases will survive having power removed > while under heavy load... It depends more on the underlying hardware setup (disk/raid array) than on the any other aspect (like OS). Assuming you have fsync enabled, of course. There is a very interesting test that you can do (if you have two machines) to see what happens if one of your machines suddenly loses power. You can read about that here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/brad/2116715.html Most of todays IDE disks comes with write caching turned on by default, and if you lose power, you'll lose some of unwriten data for sure. Turn it off, or if you're using ext3 on Linux 2.6, you can mount your partitions with barrier=1 option which will make your fsyncs safe and still let you get some benefits from write caching. Of course, your production quality database would be on the powerful SCSI disk array behind a good RAID controller. Question there is have you bought the (often) additional battery backup for your RAID card? If notm turn the write caching off, once again, or you WILL lose your data and corrupt your database if you suddenly lose power. -- Zlatko ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
