Re: 32-bit to 64-bit migration options

On Fri, 2012-02-10 at 07:45 -0700, Greg Spiegelberg wrote:
> All,
>
> I'm planning a migration for a customer with a PostgreSQL 8.4 database
> cluster running CentOS 4.8 32-bit. The target platform is CentOS 6.2
> 64-bit and will be running PostgreSQL 8.4 (our application delivers and
> supports 8.4, don't bother bringing up 9.x). If this were a small database
> cluster I wouldn't worry about it however the 8.4 database cluster is about
> 900 GB right now. The documented and proper way to move this data is via a
> dump-restore however I'm not sure my customer wants days or potentially
> weeks of downtime so I'm searching for options.
>
> Option 1: dump-restore
> I've performed a handful of these for other customers and even the 100 GB
> database cluster using the network transfer method "pg_dumpall | ssh target
> -c 'cat - | psql postgres'" can be slow as in 8+ hours.
>

Right.

> Option 2: Slony-I
> Is Slony-I an alternative when moving data from 32-bit to 64-bit?
>

Yes, absolutely.

> Option 3: pg_upgrade
> Is this an option? Remember, I'm going from 8.4 32-bit to 8.4 64-bit.
>

No because of the 32/64 bit change.

> Option 4: PITR
> I believe this is not a possibility because of the bit-ness change but I'm
> listing anyways in case I'm mistaken.
>

No because of the 32/64 bit change.

> Did I miss anything?
>

Well, you can also use Londiste, and probably Bucardo to do this. But I
guess they are your only options with Slony.

--
Guillaume
http://blog.guillaume.lelarge.info
http://www.dalibo.com