Re: Warm Standby - log shipping

What I'm hearing is that I have to perform a base backup on my master in
Mass. after recovery completes, send that over a secure network
To Virginia, and lay it down there. Simple enough but the time to travel
Over the network becomes an issue - 12 - 13 hours at best.
If we have to do this then we will. I just want to make sure I'm
understanding your advice.

Thanks

Mark Steben│Database Administrator│
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-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Grittner [mailto:Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov]
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 5:20 PM
To: Mark Steben; pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Warm Standby - log shipping

>>> "Mark Steben" <msteben(at)autorevenue(dot)com> wrote:

> We are at postgresql 8.2.5

You really should update to 8.2.11 or consider going to 8.3.5.

http://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning

> We plan on using the Norfolk server not so much as a recovery
failover but
> as a replicated database
> To run reports and establish a data warehousing environment. As such
the
> plan is to run the
> Standby in recovery state for the majority of the day, then
'complete'
> recovery there, bring it
> Online, perform our reporting and data warehousing functions (in
read-only
> mode of course),
> Then bring it back into recovery mode, letting the updates catch up
for the
> next days processing.
>
> My questions are:
>
> 1. Is this a proper usage of log shipping?

Once you complete recovery you don't have a good way back, short of
getting a new base backup. If you have space, you could stop the
replica server without leaving recovery state, do a copy of the
cluster to another directory, restart your replica, start the copied
cluster's server, complete recovery, and start running your reports.

> 3. I am currently in a state where a log got partially copied and
postgres
> cannot find a valid checkpoint to restart. What is the best way to
remedy
> this situation? Pg_resetxlog perhaps?

I'd get a fresh base backup from which to start.

-Kevin