Re: Using SAN Splits to instantly copy a DB

On Nov 14, 2006, at 3:44 PM, Paul Silveira wrote:
> Does anyone know if it is possible to use SAN Splitting (the
> function of
> splitting a mirror of disks so that there are two idential copies of a
> Postgres Instance)?

There are essentially 2 rules for doing a filesystem-level copy of
the database:

1. A copy is unlikely to work on a different architecture or OS.
2. You must either shut the database down to make the copy, use PITR,
or do a filesystem snapshot or equivalent.

Rule 2 is needed to ensure that the data files in the database are
all consistent to each other. If you have a SAN/filesystem with
snapshot capability (sounds like you do), then you can do that to
create the copy rather than shutting the database down.
--
Jim Nasby jim(at)nasby(dot)net
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)