Re: [GENERAL] monitoring warm standby lag in 8.4?

2010-12-10 Thread Greg Sabino Mullane

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Hash: RIPEMD160


 I'm wondering if there's an accepted way to monitor a warm standby
 machine's lag in 8.4. The wiki[1] has a link[2] to a script which
 parses the output of pg_controldata, looking for a line like this:

 Time of latest checkpoint:Thu 09 Dec 2010 01:35:46 PM EST
 
 But I'm not sure whether this timestamp is to be trusted as an
 indicator of how far behind the standby is in its recovery -- this
 timestamp just tells us when the standby last performed a checkpoint,
 regardless of how far behind in the WAL stream it is, right?

Correct. But since we cannot connect to a database in recovery mode, 
there are very few options to determine how far 'behind' it is. The 
pg_controldata is what the check_postgres program uses. This offers a 
rough check which is usually sufficient unless you have a very 
inactive database or need very fine grained checking.

A better system would perhaps connect to both ends and examine which 
specific WALs were being shipped and which one was last played, but 
there are no tools I know of that do that. I suspect the reason for 
this is that the pg_controldata check is good enough. Certainly, 
that's what we are using for many clients via check_postgres, and 
it's been very good at detecting when the replica has problems. Good 
enough that I've never worried about writing a different method, 
anyway. :)

- -- 
Greg Sabino Mullane g...@turnstep.com
End Point Corporation http://www.endpoint.com/
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Re: [GENERAL] monitoring warm standby lag in 8.4?

2010-12-10 Thread Scott Mead
Yeah, my website is busted.  I'll fix it for you.


On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Josh Kupershmidt schmi...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi all,

 I'm wondering if there's an accepted way to monitor a warm standby
 machine's lag in 8.4. The wiki[1] has a link[2] to a script which
 parses the output of pg_controldata, looking for a line like this:

  Time of latest checkpoint:            Thu 09 Dec 2010 01:35:46 PM EST

 But I'm not sure whether this timestamp is to be trusted as an
 indicator of how far behind the standby is in its recovery -- this
 timestamp just tells us when the standby last performed a checkpoint,
 regardless of how far behind in the WAL stream it is, right?

 I haven't come across any other monitoring suggestions for warm
 standby on 8.4. I've seen suggestions for hot standby slaves to use:
  SELECT pg_last_xlog_receive_location();
 but this won't work on an 8.4 warm standby of course. I've searched
 around and haven't found[3] any other tips on how to monitor my
 standby.

 The manual mentions[4] using pg_xlogfile_name_offset() in the context
 of implementing record-based log shipping. Would this be useful for
 monitoring standby lag? Any other ideas?

 Thanks,
 Josh


 --
 [1] http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Warm_Standby
 [2] http://www.kennygorman.com/wordpress/?p=249
 [3] I was hoping this page would have some relevant info:
 http://www.scottrmead.com/blogs/scott/warm-standby-monitoring , but
 it's down now :(
 [4] 
 http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/warm-standby.html#WARM-STANDBY-RECORD

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[GENERAL] monitoring warm standby lag in 8.4?

2010-12-09 Thread Josh Kupershmidt
Hi all,

I'm wondering if there's an accepted way to monitor a warm standby
machine's lag in 8.4. The wiki[1] has a link[2] to a script which
parses the output of pg_controldata, looking for a line like this:

  Time of latest checkpoint:Thu 09 Dec 2010 01:35:46 PM EST

But I'm not sure whether this timestamp is to be trusted as an
indicator of how far behind the standby is in its recovery -- this
timestamp just tells us when the standby last performed a checkpoint,
regardless of how far behind in the WAL stream it is, right?

I haven't come across any other monitoring suggestions for warm
standby on 8.4. I've seen suggestions for hot standby slaves to use:
  SELECT pg_last_xlog_receive_location();
but this won't work on an 8.4 warm standby of course. I've searched
around and haven't found[3] any other tips on how to monitor my
standby.

The manual mentions[4] using pg_xlogfile_name_offset() in the context
of implementing record-based log shipping. Would this be useful for
monitoring standby lag? Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Josh


--
[1] http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Warm_Standby
[2] http://www.kennygorman.com/wordpress/?p=249
[3] I was hoping this page would have some relevant info:
http://www.scottrmead.com/blogs/scott/warm-standby-monitoring , but
it's down now :(
[4] 
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/warm-standby.html#WARM-STANDBY-RECORD

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