Re: Replication Across Two Servers?

On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Carlos Mennens <carlos(dot)mennens(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Prashant Bharucha <prashantbharucha(at)yahoo(dot)ca> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Carlos
>>
>> Use Slony "master to multiple slaves" replication system for PostgreSQL supporting cascading (e.g. - a node can feed another node which feeds another node...) and failover.
>> http://slony.info/
>>
>
> I'm not sure I see the point of using a third party application to do something PostgreSQL can do natively. Am I missing something here?

Whether it's "third party" is immaterial really, the real issue is
what are your requirements and which method best meets those
requirements. For certain more complex replication setups, slony is a
better method. For instance you can create interesting indexes on a
slony slave that are independent of the master, or create views,
materialized or otherwise on a reporting server and so on. While
streaming replication is easier to setup and maintain, and generally a
bit more efficient, it's also got a more limited scope of operation.

Also, if you want to run 8.4 for now, which you've tested against, and
move from 8.4 to 9.1 or 9.2 at a later date, slony is built to do just
that, with running from one major version to another being one of the
things it's really good at.

The real answer then is that it comes down to which meets your
requirements the best. Both are well tested and supported.