Re: Setting up a warm standby server - some questions

Hello,

I could solve one of the questions myself :)
> I have also problems shutting down the secondary server while it is in
> "standby" (i.e. recovery) mode

This works fine when using "-m fast" instead of "-m immediate".

I would still like an answer on these questions:

> What is the recommended way to switch back to the primary, once that is
> up and running again?
> What is the recommended way to get the secondary back into the "standby"
> mode?

As we are trying to minimize the possible data loss, I'm looking at the archive_timeout setting (I'm currently evaluating our possibilities with 8.4)

The manual at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/continuous-archiving.html#RECOVERY-CONFIG-SETTINGS
states:

"It is therefore unwise to set a very short archive_timeout — it will bloat your archive storage.
archive_timeout settings of a minute or so are usually reasonable"

But on the other hand
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/warm-standby.html
states:

"The length of the window of data loss can be limited by use of the archive_timeout parameter, which can
be set as low as a few seconds if required"

but kind of restrains itself right after that by stating:

"However such low settings will substantially increase the bandwidth requirements for file shipping"

My question is: is that the bandwidth between primary and standby?

If the archive is stored on a differend harddisk (or storgae system) as the data directory, I'd reckon it wouldn't have much impact on the primary server. Or am I missing something?

Regards
Thomas