Using postgres on kvm virtual server
 

Hello,

I'm planning to virtualize one of my production servers. It has postgres 8.2, and I would know if someone had experience of running postgres on a virtual server.

Regards.

I've been using the Oracle Sun version of Virtualbox quite successfully. It allows proper allocation of USB devices, networking, video and sound - not important if you are going to create a postgres database server.

I suggest you check these sites for more information (and search their forums):

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page
http://www.virtualbox.org
http://www.postgresql.org

Regards,
Steve Dupuis
Ottawa, Canada

1. I have been running MSSQL and MSJET (Exchange and AD) in production for a while now, on KVM machines - no problem.
2. I know of several Oracle production setups on top of KVM - again, stable all the way
3. I have seen quite a few LAMP hosts on KVM, so MySQL seems to be working OK as well
4. No personal experience with PG, but what I would do to make it work is as follows:

A stable Enterprise-class Linux distro as the platform (yes, I'd go for RHEL)
VirtIO drivers for disk and network
Virtual disk image residing on a fast and reliable storage (RAID10 LUN, on a well maintained SAN would be best, but that costs)
Virtual disk image should not be using any of QEMU's caching options, meaning use cache=none. Slightly slower, but much safer for heavily utilised v-disk
Unless you absolutely must use v-disk snapshots, stick to RAW disks, not qcow2 - there's a bit of performance penalty, if you want the extra features.
Provide the VM with multiple v-CPUs and enough RAM

Oh, and if you can stress-test the thing in a test host and VM before you go into production, that would be best.

Hope _this_ helps.

Thanks for you information and suggestion.

I'm working on a test server with slackware linux (this is the distro we are using for all of our servers).

Following your suggestion I'll try also using VirtIO drivers and no cache.