We are trying to upgrade our production postgres database instance that is approximately 4TB in size and it contains various table partition structures.; a separate tablespace for each partition. We were initially successful in performing the upgrade using pg_upgrade with both the link and copy options in our development environment, but that environment has a different hardware configuration {DAS storage and centOS operating system and dedicated server} than what is configured in production.
When we attempted to upgrade using pg_upgrade with the link option on our production database. Our Production database is configured with RHEL 5.4, NAS storage; configured utilizing a symlink that references the file system on the network, and VMWare. We ran the pg_upgrade procedures, and it completed to quickly (less than 10 mins) - pg_upgrade (using the link option) is supposed to merge the legacy (8.4.3) DB cluster with the new, empty (9.1.4) cluster. - Both databases clusters were being identified as 8.4.3 clusters AFTER the upgrade. This was strange, we do not have an explanation. It acted as if the upgrade downgraded the 9.1.4 cluster to 8.4.3. - At completion, the DB files were unusable. They would not start under 9.1.4 or 8.4.3. Could our production server's hardware configuration possibility be the culprit responsible for this upgrade failure? Thanks in Advance for any assistance