Nandalal Gunaratne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > An interesting implication is that it is now possible to build OIO > > production servers that run entirely from CD-ROM and RAM - with > periodic > > auto-backup to networked storage or solid state memory, like USB > connected > > flash drives. > > This is MOST interesting! OIO must be the only EMR system which can > do this! If you may remember I wrote to you in an email of this > possiblity when we discovered Knoppix. I have been speaking of this > to my colleagues and now it has come true! With RAM being cheap, it > maybe possible to use an older PC with lots of RAM as a server with > USB or CD backup! This has great implications in the developing > countries where buying new computers is very expensive. In my country > we can buy 5-7 used Pentium II PCs ( DELL/IBM) for one new one.
That might be quite viable provided that the server was powered via a good (regularly tested!) UPS (uninterruptable power supply), and you would still want to checkpoint (dump and save) the database to the USB device fairly often - certainly many times each day. By having more than one USB and rotating them offsite, you could even have encyrpted (Knoppix does this for you) offsite back- ups of your database in your shirt pocket or on your keyring. The limiting factor would be the size of the database, and the amount of time it takes PostgreSQL to dump it to a compressed dump file, and possibly the amount of time it takes to copy that file to the USB device (since USB 1.1 interfaces are a bit slow, as previously discussed). Someone needs to experiement with this and report back... Tim C
