docs: add initial witness server documentation

This commit is contained in:
Ian Barwick
2017-11-17 08:51:21 +09:00
parent 08b443dce0
commit 3164bfa043
4 changed files with 58 additions and 0 deletions

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@@ -145,6 +145,31 @@
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>witness server</term>
<listitem>
<para>
&repmgr; provides functionality to set up a so-called "witness server" to
assist in determining a new master server in a failover situation with more
than one standby. The witness server itself is not part of the replication
cluster, although it does contain a copy of the repmgr metadata schema
(see below).
</para>
<para>
The purpose of a witness server is to provide a "casting vote" where servers
in the replication cluster are split over more than one location. In the event
of a loss of connectivity between locations, the presence or absence of
the witness server will decide whether a server at that location is promoted
to master; this is to prevent a "split-brain" situation where an isolated
location interprets a network outage as a failure of the (remote) master and
promotes a (local) standby.
</para>
<para>
A witness server only needs to be created if <application>repmgrd</application>
is in use.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
</sect1>