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Asynchronous replication

Asynchronous replication allows primary-side completion without waiting for the corresponding update to reach a specified processing stage on a replica.

The remote copy may lag, so promotion can lose acknowledged transactions that it has not received. PostgreSQL 18 streaming replication defaults to this mode. This is distinct from asynchronous local commit: local WAL can be durable while remote replication remains asynchronous. A lag observation alone is not a recovery-point guarantee. Asynchronous replication can still encounter backpressure when buffers fill, as documented for DRBD protocol A.

Relations

related
synchronous-replication, replication-lag, mirroring

Citations

  1. PostgreSQL 18: warm standby and synchronous replication (accessed 2026-10-12)
  2. PostgreSQL 18: WAL settings, synchronous_commit (accessed 2026-10-12)
  3. Replication acknowledgements: received, durable, applied (accessed 2026-10-12)
  4. LINBIT DRBD 9 guide: section 2.3, replication modes (accessed 2026-10-12)

JSON: /data/terms/asynchronous-replication.json