Hi Igor,
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 2:13 PM, Igor Shmain
<igor.shmain@gmail.com> wrote:
I need to design a solution for a database which will grow and will require a horizontal split at some moment.
Ok
Here is how I am planning to do it: Every record in every table has a shard number. After the database becomes too large (gets too many requests), the tables need to be horizontally split. It means that for every table all records with some specific shard numbers need to be moved to a new database.
Since PG does not support the notion of a shard at the database layer, you will have to create this yourself. The key to scaling shards is ensuring there there are no cross-shard joins (or any other shared data); this is an application-design question so unless you "own" the application-design, this will be difficult to achieve. If you do own the design, the application's entity-tree will have to be carefully constructed to avoid any sharing of resources across shards. RDBMS programmers are taught just the opposite so this will require diligence from your team with a very clear, likely simple, application-entity design amenable to shard-ing.
My plan is to (1) create a copy of the database on a new server (backup/restore?), (2) synchronize the databases (how?), and then (3) forward all requests for the moved shards to the new database. (I will get rid of the unneeded shards later). An important requirement: there should be no outage for the users.
As I mentioned above, it is unlikely that you will be able to shard an RDBMS at this level; you need to look at the application entity-design.
What are the ways to achieve it?
If you mean to dictate a shard solution, very few will be able to help. On the other hand, if you mean to ask for help in finding a "low-cost scale-able PG DB solution for a typical RDBMS application with the potential for rapid growth", then there are a number of options which have been employed with success. For predominately read applications, use a single master database replication strategy:
For predominately write applications, you will likely need a multi-master solution (unless you can dictate the application entity-design) which is more complex territory from a scale-ability and application design standpoint but you might look at Postgres-XS and Londiste for ideas.
Cheers,
Jan
