Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-23 Thread Shane Ambler

Jan Otto wrote:

Hi Mathias,

On Aug 22, 2008, at 8:35 AM, Mathias Stjernström wrote:


I Agree with Robert but i never heard of Cybercluster before. Does
anyone have any experience with Cybercluster? It sounds really 
interesting!


Some months ago i took a look into cybercluster. At that point 
cybercluster was basically postgres-source 8.3 patched already with

pgcluster sources.



I do believe it is a packaged version of pgcluster

Does anyone have experience with bucardo? It's still a recent addition
to open source offerings. No DDL replication but it does support two
masters.



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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-22 Thread RW


My company finally has the means to install a new database server for 
replication.  I have Googled and found a lot of sparse information out 
there regarding replication systems for PostgreSQL and a lot of it 
looks very out-of-date.  Can I please get some ideas from those of you 
that are currently using fail-over replication systems?  What 
advantage does your solution have?  What are the gotchas I need to 
worry about?


My desire would be to have a parallel server that could act as a hot 
standby system with automatic fail over in a multi-master role.  If 
our primary server goes down for whatever reason, the secondary would 
take over and handle the load seamlessly.  I think this is really the 
holy grail scenario and I understand how difficult it is to 
achieve.  Especially since we make frequent use of sequences in our 
databases.  If MM is too difficult, I'm willing to accept a 
hot-standby read-only system that will handle queries until we can fix 
whatever ails the master.
We are primary an OLAP environment but there is a constant stream of 
inserts into the databases.  There are 47 different databases hosted 
on the primary server and this number will continue to scale up to 
whatever the server seems to support.  The reason I mention this 
number is that it seems that those systems that make heavy use of 
schema changes require a lot of fiddling.  For a single database, 
this doesn't seem too problematic, but any manual work involved and 
administrative overhead will scale at the same rate as the database 
count grows and I certainly want to minimize as much fiddling as 
possible.




If you really need only need automatic failover than use DRBD + Heartbeat
somebody already mentioned. We are using this solution since 3 years now.
With DRBD replication is done at filesystem block level. So you don't 
have to

bother about changes done with a DDL statement and Heartbeat will
automatically failover if one server goes down. It's really stable.

If you want MM you should give Cybercluster a try. 
(http://www.postgresql.at/english/pr_cybercluster_e.html)

They offer good support and is Open Source since a few month now.

Robert


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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-22 Thread Mathias Stjernström
Yup, but sometimes you are not in charge of the DDL changes. You may  
have many different users that make changes or for example if you are  
working with Ruby On Rails you have something thats called Migrations  
that handles all DDL changes in those situations it can get really  
complicated with those slony scripts. My experience is that automatic  
handling of DDL changes is a very important feature of a replication  
system of curse not in all systems but in many.


I am also very interested in the WAL replication that David Lang asked  
about.


Best regards,
Mathias Stjernström

http://www.pastbedti.me/



On 21 aug 2008, at 23.26, salman wrote:




Mathias Stjernström wrote:
Yes thats true. It does support DDL changes but not in a automatic  
way. You have to execute all DDL changes with a separate script.


That's true, but it's quite simple to do with the provided perl  
script(s) - slonik_execute_script. I've had to make use of it a few  
times and have had no problems.


-salman




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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-22 Thread Mathias Stjernström

I Agree with Robert but i never heard of Cybercluster before.
Does anyone have any experience with Cybercluster? It sounds really  
interesting!


Best regards,
Mathias Stjernström

http://www.pastbedti.me/


On 22 aug 2008, at 08.18, RW wrote:



My company finally has the means to install a new database server  
for replication.  I have Googled and found a lot of sparse  
information out there regarding replication systems for PostgreSQL  
and a lot of it looks very out-of-date.  Can I please get some  
ideas from those of you that are currently using fail-over  
replication systems?  What advantage does your solution have?  What  
are the gotchas I need to worry about?


My desire would be to have a parallel server that could act as a  
hot standby system with automatic fail over in a multi-master  
role.  If our primary server goes down for whatever reason, the  
secondary would take over and handle the load seamlessly.  I think  
this is really the holy grail scenario and I understand how  
difficult it is to achieve.  Especially since we make frequent use  
of sequences in our databases.  If MM is too difficult, I'm willing  
to accept a hot-standby read-only system that will handle queries  
until we can fix whatever ails the master.
We are primary an OLAP environment but there is a constant stream  
of inserts into the databases.  There are 47 different databases  
hosted on the primary server and this number will continue to scale  
up to whatever the server seems to support.  The reason I mention  
this number is that it seems that those systems that make heavy use  
of schema changes require a lot of fiddling.  For a single  
database, this doesn't seem too problematic, but any manual work  
involved and administrative overhead will scale at the same rate as  
the database count grows and I certainly want to minimize as much  
fiddling as possible.



If you really need only need automatic failover than use DRBD +  
Heartbeat
somebody already mentioned. We are using this solution since 3 years  
now.
With DRBD replication is done at filesystem block level. So you  
don't have to

bother about changes done with a DDL statement and Heartbeat will
automatically failover if one server goes down. It's really stable.

If you want MM you should give Cybercluster a try. (http://www.postgresql.at/english/pr_cybercluster_e.html 
)

They offer good support and is Open Source since a few month now.

Robert


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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-22 Thread Peter Eisentraut
Dan Harris wrote:
 My desire would be to have a parallel server that could act as a hot
 standby system with automatic fail over in a multi-master role.

I will add my me too for DRBD + Heartbeat.

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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-22 Thread Jan Otto

Hi Mathias,

On Aug 22, 2008, at 8:35 AM, Mathias Stjernström wrote:


I Agree with Robert but i never heard of Cybercluster before.
Does anyone have any experience with Cybercluster? It sounds really  
interesting!


Some months ago i took a look into cybercluster. At that point  
cybercluster was

basically postgres-source 8.3 patched already with pgcluster sources.

Best regards,

Jan
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[PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Dan Harris
My company finally has the means to install a new database server for 
replication.  I have Googled and found a lot of sparse information out 
there regarding replication systems for PostgreSQL and a lot of it looks 
very out-of-date.  Can I please get some ideas from those of you that 
are currently using fail-over replication systems?  What advantage does 
your solution have?  What are the gotchas I need to worry about?


My desire would be to have a parallel server that could act as a hot 
standby system with automatic fail over in a multi-master role.  If our 
primary server goes down for whatever reason, the secondary would take 
over and handle the load seamlessly.  I think this is really the holy 
grail scenario and I understand how difficult it is to achieve.  
Especially since we make frequent use of sequences in our databases.  If 
MM is too difficult, I'm willing to accept a hot-standby read-only 
system that will handle queries until we can fix whatever ails the master. 

We are primary an OLAP environment but there is a constant stream of 
inserts into the databases.  There are 47 different databases hosted on 
the primary server and this number will continue to scale up to whatever 
the server seems to support.  The reason I mention this number is that 
it seems that those systems that make heavy use of schema changes 
require a lot of fiddling.  For a single database, this doesn't seem 
too problematic, but any manual work involved and administrative 
overhead will scale at the same rate as the database count grows and I 
certainly want to minimize as much fiddling as possible.


We are using 8.3 and the total combined size for the PG data directory 
is 226G.  Hopefully I didn't neglect to include more relevant information.


As always, thank you for your insight.

-Dan



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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Mathias Stjernström

Hi Dan!

Its true, many of the replication options that exists for PostgreSQL  
have not seen any updates in a while.


If you only looking for redundancy and not a performance gain you  
should look at PostgreSQL PITR (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/backup-online.html 
)


For Master-Slave replication i think that Slony http://www.slony.info/  
is most up to date. But it does not support DDL changes.


You may wich to look at pgpool http://pgpool.projects.postgresql.org/  
it supports Synchronous replication (wich is good for data integrity,  
but can be bad for performance).


These are some of the open source options. I do not have any  
experience with the commercial onces.


Best regards,
Mathias

http://www.pastbedti.me/


On 21 aug 2008, at 19.53, Dan Harris wrote:

My company finally has the means to install a new database server  
for replication.  I have Googled and found a lot of sparse  
information out there regarding replication systems for PostgreSQL  
and a lot of it looks very out-of-date.  Can I please get some ideas  
from those of you that are currently using fail-over replication  
systems?  What advantage does your solution have?  What are the  
gotchas I need to worry about?


My desire would be to have a parallel server that could act as a hot  
standby system with automatic fail over in a multi-master role.  If  
our primary server goes down for whatever reason, the secondary  
would take over and handle the load seamlessly.  I think this is  
really the holy grail scenario and I understand how difficult it  
is to achieve.  Especially since we make frequent use of sequences  
in our databases.  If MM is too difficult, I'm willing to accept a  
hot-standby read-only system that will handle queries until we can  
fix whatever ails the master.
We are primary an OLAP environment but there is a constant stream of  
inserts into the databases.  There are 47 different databases hosted  
on the primary server and this number will continue to scale up to  
whatever the server seems to support.  The reason I mention this  
number is that it seems that those systems that make heavy use of  
schema changes require a lot of fiddling.  For a single database,  
this doesn't seem too problematic, but any manual work involved and  
administrative overhead will scale at the same rate as the database  
count grows and I certainly want to minimize as much fiddling as  
possible.


We are using 8.3 and the total combined size for the PG data  
directory is 226G.  Hopefully I didn't neglect to include more  
relevant information.


As always, thank you for your insight.

-Dan



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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Andrew Sullivan
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 10:53:05PM +0200, Mathias Stjernström wrote:

 For Master-Slave replication i think that Slony http://www.slony.info/ is 
 most up to date. But it does not support DDL changes.

This isn't quite true.  It supports DDL; it just doesn't support it in
the normal way, and is broken by applications doing DDL as part of the
regular operation.  

A

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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Alan Hodgson
On Thursday 21 August 2008, Dan Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Especially since we make frequent use of sequences in our databases.  If
 MM is too difficult, I'm willing to accept a hot-standby read-only
 system that will handle queries until we can fix whatever ails the
 master.

A heartbeat+DRBD solution might make more sense than database-level 
replication to achieve this. 

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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Mathias Stjernström
Yes thats true. It does support DDL changes but not in a automatic  
way. You have to execute all DDL changes with a separate script.


What's the status of http://www.commandprompt.com/products/mammothreplicator/ 
 ?


Best regards,
Mathias

http://www.pastbedti.me/


On 21 aug 2008, at 23.04, Andrew Sullivan wrote:


On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 10:53:05PM +0200, Mathias Stjernström wrote:

For Master-Slave replication i think that Slony http://www.slony.info/ 
 is

most up to date. But it does not support DDL changes.


This isn't quite true.  It supports DDL; it just doesn't support it in
the normal way, and is broken by applications doing DDL as part of the
regular operation.

A

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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Joshua Drake
On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:21:26 +0200
Mathias Stjernström [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Yes thats true. It does support DDL changes but not in a automatic  
 way. You have to execute all DDL changes with a separate script.
 
 What's the status of
 http://www.commandprompt.com/products/mammothreplicator/ ?
 

It is about to go open source but it doesn't replicate DDL either.

Joshua D. Drake
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PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/
United States PostgreSQL Association: http://www.postgresql.us/
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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread salman



Mathias Stjernström wrote:
Yes thats true. It does support DDL changes but not in a automatic way. 
You have to execute all DDL changes with a separate script.




That's true, but it's quite simple to do with the provided perl 
script(s) - slonik_execute_script. I've had to make use of it a few 
times and have had no problems.


-salman

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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Alan Hodgson
On Thursday 21 August 2008, salman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Mathias Stjernström wrote:
  Yes thats true. It does support DDL changes but not in a automatic way.
  You have to execute all DDL changes with a separate script.

 That's true, but it's quite simple to do with the provided perl
 script(s) - slonik_execute_script. I've had to make use of it a few
 times and have had no problems.

I do it almost every day, and it is not all that simple if your 
configuration is complex. The original poster would require at least 47 
different Slony clusters, for starters. The complications from adding and 
dropping tables and sequences across 47 databases, and trying to keep Slony 
up to date throughout, staggers the imagination, honestly.

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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Alvaro Herrera
Joshua Drake wrote:
 On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:21:26 +0200
 Mathias Stjernström [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  Yes thats true. It does support DDL changes but not in a automatic  
  way. You have to execute all DDL changes with a separate script.
  
  What's the status of
  http://www.commandprompt.com/products/mammothreplicator/ ?
 
 It is about to go open source but it doesn't replicate DDL either.

It doesn't replicate multiple databases either.

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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread david

On Thu, 21 Aug 2008, Mathias Stjernstr?m wrote:


Hi Dan!

Its true, many of the replication options that exists for PostgreSQL have not 
seen any updates in a while.


If you only looking for redundancy and not a performance gain you should look 
at PostgreSQL PITR 
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/backup-online.html)


For Master-Slave replication i think that Slony http://www.slony.info/ is 
most up to date. But it does not support DDL changes.


You may wich to look at pgpool http://pgpool.projects.postgresql.org/ it 
supports Synchronous replication (wich is good for data integrity, but can be 
bad for performance).


These are some of the open source options. I do not have any experience with 
the commercial onces.


a couple of months ago there was a lot of news about a WAL based 
replication engine. one that was closed source, but possibly getting 
opened shortly, and also the decision by the core devs to add one into the 
base distro.


what's been happening on this front?

from my understanding the first versions of this would not support queries 
of the replica, but would provide for the consistancy needed for reliable 
failover.


David Lang

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Re: [PERFORM] The state of PG replication in 2008/Q2?

2008-08-21 Thread Joshua Drake
On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:54:11 -0400
Alvaro Herrera [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Joshua Drake wrote:
  On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:21:26 +0200
  Mathias Stjernström [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  
   Yes thats true. It does support DDL changes but not in a
   automatic way. You have to execute all DDL changes with a
   separate script.
   
   What's the status of
   http://www.commandprompt.com/products/mammothreplicator/ ?
  
  It is about to go open source but it doesn't replicate DDL either.
 
 It doesn't replicate multiple databases either.
 

True

Joshua D. Drake

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