Advice: HA Storage Appliance for Postgres

[Danny Howard]

Problem: We have a Postgres database hosted on FreeBSD.  We require high
availability.  The present solution is to dump the database with some
frequency, and copy the dumps off the machine.  If the primary database
fails, another machine loads the latest dump and steps in.  (Manual
failover.)

This is sub-optimal, and our engineering team is working on a long-term
replication solution that will work across databases at multiple sites.

I'd like to maybe set up a dedicated disk solution where I can store the
database on a RAID array on its own hardware unit, maybe with a
hot-failover RAID controller -- the idea being that the backend storage
will be high availability, and if one machine fails, I can bring the
data up on another server (though I may have to run fsck or the postgres
clean sequence first)

I have a little experience with NetApps, as well as with some dedicated
hardware that connected to the servers via SCSI cables.  I think the
latter is a better solution, especially if I can connect multiple
servers to the same RAID hardware, and bring up the disk on one or the
other.  (Having a Datacenter Tech walk over and swap a cable could also
do ...)

I really don't need much storage.  A few hundred gigabytes should hold
me for some time. :)

Can someone offer a bit of advice here:
- Am I thinking the right way?
- I think I want to avoid anything called "SAN" right?
- These days, is SATA versus SCSI versus fiber versus copper connects
  important?
- Anyone have a particular vendor they like?  There was a place in
  Soquel that was very helpful for me back in 2000 but I can not seem to
  find them any more ... HP?  IBM?  Sun?  A local integrator?  (ASA
  don't seem to do this stuff.)
- Is an NFS/NetApp solution viable?
- Do smaller disks provide better performance in RAID contexts?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Sincerely,
-danny

-- 
http://dannyman.toldme.com/