The PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook written by Shaun M. Thomas, unlike any other PostgreSQL references which concentrate on Postgres programming, focus on the scalability and high availability of a PostgreSQL server. The various recipes available in this book from hardware selection through setting up database pools and cluster control reminds you of a complete meal!
The one peculiarity of this book is, its written in such a way that one can quickly pick the chapter he wanted to refer without reading the whole. It is a must have reference over your desk if you are keen towards postgres database administration.
An excerpt of few randomly picked recipes will be helpful for a better understanding of the structure of the book.
Defusing cache poisoning
All data stored by PostgreSQL in shared memory is cleared upon shutting down the server. After restarting the server the subsequent queries will take longer time to execute since cache is not yet rebuilt. This will eventually result in further slowing down of the rebuild process as well. This recipe from chapter 2 provides us with multiple ways of reinstating the cache quickly before starting the server again or immediately after the restart.
Identifying important tables
Having a prior knowledge of the most important tables, indexes and other data base objects is crucial in maintaining a highly available data base. This recipe, again from chapter 2, presents some very useful statistical queries to identify the most active objects of the DB.
Installing & Configuring PgBouncer
This two recipes from chapter 3 describes how to install and configure the powerful connection pooling tool – PgBouncer. Right from installing PgBouncer from ubuntu repository, these recipes gives a detailed step by step quide to calculate and configure each and every parameter.
It is not the end! Grab your copy now to unlock hundreds of such extremely useful recipes: PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook
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Reviewed by Vipin Raj & Rahul Radhakrishnan
