[Pgpool-general] some basic questions

[Gerd König]

Hello,

since I'm currently evaluating pgpool-II (replication mode) I have some
basic questions, or even better I need some hints if the steps are
valueable:

1.) initial setup
-----------------
node1: "master" db, pgpool-II
node2: blank postgresql installation, $PGDATA=/opt/postgres/data
1.1) stop postgres on node1
1.2) rsync -avc node1:/opt/postgres/data node2:/opt/postgres/data
1.3) start postgres on node1 and node2
1.4) start pgpool-II
=> works

2.) get back to sync after database failure
-------------------------------------------
in our test scenario I stopped postgres on node2 while some
inserts/updates were running.
To get back to a sync'ed state I did:
2.1) node2: rm -rf /opt/postgres/data
2.2) stop pgpool-II and postgres on node1
2.3) rsync -avc node1:/opt/postgres/data node2:/opt/postgres/data
2.4) start postgres on node1 and node2
2.5) start pgpool-II
=> works, but isn't that nice since this causes database downtime and I
think there are better ways ;-)

3.) make pgpool-II high available
---------------------------------
to get rid of a single-point-of-failure I'm thinking of installing
pgpool-II on both database-nodes and let heartbeat check the
availability of the "main" pgpool-II installation and switch the virtual
IP in the case of a failure.
Are there other solutions ?

many thanks in advance...::GERD::...