Re: Deleting WAL archives and pg_xlog when there is not a shared drive

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 9:37 AM, Eng. AlSamman <iyamen(at)live(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I am trying to implement a high-availability cluster using only two nodes,
> without any shared disk storage.
>
> In my implementation, the primary database has continuous archiving set up
> to a directory residing on the second node, where the standby database is.
> Streaming replication is also established between the two. When failover
> occurs, the standby is promoted to primary, and will start its continuous
> archiving but now on a directory on the other (former primary) node.
>
> Call the primary node N1 and the standby N2. When N1 fails and N2 is
> promoted, can I safely delete the archive logs stored on N2 (which were
> archived by N1 when it was primary?)?

That depends on your backup policy. Do you try to maintain some kind
of PITR availability window, or are you solely concerned with hardware
issues and not human error?

In any case, in the middle of an unusual event seems like a poor time
to go around cleaning up only tangentially related things.

Cheers,

Jeff