Whether you use the Base API or the Replication Manager, replication creates a set of internal files that are normally stored on-disk in your environment home directory. These files contain metadata which is necessary for replication operations, and so you should never delete these files.
You can cause these files to not be stored on disk, but instead to be held entirely in-memory, by specifying the DB_REP_CONF_INMEM flag to the DB_ENV->rep_set_config() method. Doing this can improve your application's data throughput by avoiding the disk I/O associated with these metadata files. However, in the event that your application is shut down, the contents of these files are lost. This results in some loss of functionality, including an increased chance that elections will fail, or that the wrong site will win an election. See the DB_REP_CONF_INMEM flag description for more information.
Note that turning on DB_REP_CONF_INMEM means that Replication
Manager cannot store group membership changes persistently. This is
because Replication Manager stores group membership information in
an internal database, which is held in memory when
DB_REP_CONF_INMEM is turned on. For this reason, if your
Replication Manager application requires replication metadata to be
stored in memory, then you must manually identify all the sites in
your replication group using the DB_LEGACY site
configuration attribute. Be aware that this configuration needs to
be made permanent. (Normally, DB_LEGACY is used
only on a temporary basis for the purpose of upgrading old
Replication Manager applications.)
Do the following:
Shut down all the sites in your replication group.
For every site in your replication group:
Configure a DB_SITE handle for the local site.
Use DB_SITE->set_config() to indicate that this
is a legacy site by setting the
DB_LEGACY parameter.
Configure a DB_SITE handle for every
other site in the replication
group. Set the DB_LEGACY
parameter for each of these handles.
Please pay careful attention to this step. To repeat: a DB_SITE handle MUST be configured for EVERY site in the replication group.
Restart all the sites in the replication group.
Alternatively, you can store persistent environment metadata files, including those required by replication, in a location other than your environment home directory. Doing so can help improve I/O throughput by placing these files on a spindle that is not being used for other environment data I/O. You do this using the DB_ENV->set_metadata_dir() method.
Note that you must configure the handling of your environment metadata consistently across your entire replication group. That is, if you place your replication metadata in-memory on one site, then it must be placed in-memory on all the sites in the group. Similarly, if you place your replication metadata files in a non-standard directory location on one site, then they must be placed in the exact same directory location on all the sites in your group.