Re: postgreSQL on NAS/SAN? - Mailing list pgsql-general

Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> writes:

> On Tue, 2003-06-17 at 12:05, Michael Meskes wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 03:41:45PM +0200, Daniel Seichter wrote:
>> > I am looking for a hot spare, so if one server crashed, the
>> > second will "spare" it, because if this database will be down
>> > (down is meant for longer than 2 hours) more than two other
>> > databases will not continue working (they could continue working,
>> > but without new data, so it will be senseless).
>>
>> Not sure what you mean. Shall the second machine take over? Since
>> this should be hot 2 hours is a lot of time. Using a private
>> network you can detect failures almost immediately.
>>
>> I do recommend a a local checking like watchdog or mon, so a
>> restart is tried before the takeover. And I'd make sure the primary
>> machine stays down.
>
> This is going to sound bad to users of Open Source OSs and
> databases, but for all work that has to go into clustering machines
> and making databases work with them...
>
> Why not use a clustered-by-design OS like VMS?  It is very easy to
> put a couple of dual-Alpha boxen cluster-connected via fiber to SCSI
> devices.  A cluster-aware relational database like Rdb runs on all
> nodes of a cluster in a totally shared-disk environment.  While both
> nodes are working fine, half of the work goes to either node, and if
> one node goes down, the other node still does all the work.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I can tell you *my* reasons for
going with PostgreSQL as opposed to a fancier solution like RDB on
VMS, or Oracle on Solaris, or DB2 on whatever IBM platform sounds
interesting today.  PostgreSQL does what I need it to do without
breaking the bank.  Sure, it's a little extra work getting PostgreSQL
to do something like hot failover (or load balancing), but when you
can't afford the other options you make do with what you have.

Besides which, PostgreSQL on x86 hardware is almost certainly the best
value around.  No one touches it on a price/performance basis, and
PostgreSQL has an impressive array of features.  For example, can I
connect my Zope application server running Linux to RDB running on
VMS?  I don't believe I can (Oracle would work, however).  PostgreSQL
plays nicely with just about any set of development tools you might
care to mention.

Jason