On 2/21/22 13:09, Euler Taveira wrote:
DESIGN

The conversion requires 8 steps.

1. Check if the target data directory has the same system identifier than the
source data directory.
2. Stop the target server if it is running as a standby server. (Modify
recovery parameters requires a restart.)
3. Create one replication slot per specified database on the source server. One
additional replication slot is created at the end to get the consistent LSN
(This consistent LSN will be used as (a) a stopping point for the recovery
process and (b) a starting point for the subscriptions).
4. Write recovery parameters into the target data directory and start the
target server (Wait until the target server is promoted).
5. Create one publication (FOR ALL TABLES) per specified database on the source
server.
6. Create one subscription per specified database on the target server (Use
replication slot and publication created in a previous step. Don't enable the
subscriptions yet).
7. Sets the replication progress to the consistent LSN that was got in a
previous step.
8. Enable the subscription for each specified database on the target server.

Very interesting!

I actually just a couple of weeks ago proposed a similar design for upgrading a database of a customer of mine. We have not tried it yet so it is not decided if we should go ahead with it.

In our case the goal is a bit different so my idea is that we will use pg_dump/pg_restore (or pg_upgrade and then some manual cleanup if pg_dump/pg_restore is too slow) on the target server. The goal of this design is to get a nice clean logical replica at the new version of PostgreSQL with indexes with the correct collations, all old invalid constraints validated, minimal bloat, etc. And all of this without creating bloat or putting too much load on the old master during the process. We have plenty of disk space and plenty of time so those are not limitations in our case. I can go into more detail if there is interest.

It is nice to see that our approach is not entirely unique. :) And I will take a look at this patch when I find the time.

Andreas


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