Re: Running postgresql as a VMware ESx client

Glen Eustace wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I was wondering whether anyone has had any experience running postgresql
> in a vm under ESx. VMware provides significant HA/DR oppurtunities and
> we would like to use it if we can. The DBase would be on a EMC SAN
> hosted LUN and the ESx servers would be dual Quad CPU HP DL-380/G5s. At
> this stage we would use iSCSI for SAN connectivity as our testing with
> MS-SQL has not indicated that FC is needed.
>
> We are getting a bit of push back from the external support agency who
> seem more than a little bit nervous about the environment. I would
> appreciate any comments.

I've done that a number of times, never had any problems. As has been
mentioned elsewhere in the thread, for low or medium load databases of
course.

Just be sure to mount the PostgreSQL filesystem(s) (both xlog and data,
if they are separate) directly to the SAN, and *don't* use the vmfs
files on the host disk. You *can* use vmfs files, but they need to be
specially configured IIRC to disable write caching, and will not perform
very well. But if you use a directly mounted SAN volume, that issue goes
away.

And obviously you need someone in your organization that knows vmware
ESX well (not just the point-click-installed level) to make sure things
are set up in a reliable way for databases.

//Magnus