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Moving PostgreSQL to an additional disk
How to add an additional disk to an instance
If it’s a baremetal server you will have to order the disk and have it installed. If it’s a machine provided by Amazon or Google you can provision the disk on the fly and add it to the machine.
Once the disk is added you can see it using
sudo fdisk -l
Assuming the disk is /dev/sdb you first have to create a partition on the disk using
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
- n (create partition)
- p (primary)
- 1 (partition number)
- default (256 - first sector)
- default (98303999 - last sector)
- w (save and quit)
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1
create a place to mount the disk
sudo mkdir /mnt/disk
mount the disk
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/disk
make the disk come up when the machine is rebooted by modifying /etc/fstab
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/disk ext4 defaults,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=1 0 0
How to move PostgreSQL to the additional disk
stop postgresql
sudo monit stop postgresql
move the postgresql data directory to the mounted disk
mv /var/lib/postgresql /mnt/disk/postgresl
symlink the mounted directory back to it’s original place
sudo ln -s /mnt/disk/postgresql /var/lib/postgresql
