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Deploying PostgreSQL for high availability with Patroni on RHEL and derivatives

This guide provides instructions on how to set up a highly available PostgreSQL cluster with Patroni on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or compatible derivatives.

Preconditions

For this setup, we will use the nodes running on RHEL 8 as the base operating system and having the following IP addresses:

Hostname Internal IP address
node1 10.104.0.1
node2 10.104.0.2
node3 10.104.0.3
HAProxy-demo 10.104.0.6

Note

Ideally, in a production (or even non-production) setup, the PostgreSQL and ETCD nodes will be within a private subnet without any public connectivity to the Internet, and the HAProxy will be in a different subnet that allows client traffic coming only from a selected IP range. To keep things simple, we have implemented this architecture in a private environment, and each node can access the other by its internal, private IP.

Initial setup

Set up hostnames in the /etc/hosts file

It’s not necessary to have name resolution, but it makes the whole setup more readable and less error prone. Here, instead of configuring a DNS, we use a local name resolution by updating the file /etc/hosts. By resolving their hostnames to their IP addresses, we make the nodes aware of each other’s names and allow their seamless communication.

  1. Run the following command on each node. Change the node name to node1, node2 and node3 respectively:

    $ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname node1

  2. Modify the /etc/hosts file of each PostgreSQL node to include the hostnames and IP addresses of the remaining nodes. Add the following at the end of the /etc/hosts file on all nodes:

    # Cluster IP and names 
10.104.0.1 node1 
10.104.0.2 node2 
10.104.0.3 node3

    # Cluster IP and names 
10.104.0.1 node1 
10.104.0.2 node2 
10.104.0.3 node3

    # Cluster IP and names 
10.104.0.1 node1 
10.104.0.2 node2 
10.104.0.3 node3

    The HAProxy instance should have the name resolution for all the three nodes in its /etc/hosts file. Add the following lines at the end of the file: 

    # Cluster IP and names
10.104.0.6 HAProxy-demo
10.104.0.1 node1
10.104.0.2 node2
10.104.0.3 node3

Install the software

  1. Install Percona Distribution for PostgreSQL on node1, node2 and node3 from Percona repository:

    Important

    Don’t initialize the cluster and start the postgresql service. The cluster initialization and setup are handled by Patroni during the bootsrapping stage.

  2. Install some Python and auxiliary packages to help with Patroni and ETCD

    $ sudo yum install python3-pip python3-devel binutils

  3. Install ETCD, Patroni, pgBackRest packages. Check platform specific notes for Patroni:

    $ sudo yum install percona-patroni \
etcd python3-python-etcd\
percona-pgbackrest

  4. Stop and disable all installed services:

    $ sudo systemctl stop {etcd,patroni,postgresql}
$ systemctl disable {etcd,patroni,postgresql}

Configure ETCD distributed store

The distributed configuration store helps establish a consensus among nodes during a failover and will manage the configuration for the three PostgreSQL instances. Although Patroni can work with other distributed consensus stores (i.e., Zookeeper, Consul, etc.), the most commonly used one is etcd.

In this setup we’ll install and configure ETCD on each database node.

Configure node1

  1. Backup the etcd.conf file:

    $ sudo mv /etc/etcd/etcd.conf /etc/etcd/etcd.conf.orig

  2. Export environment variables to simplify the config file creation

    • Node name:
    $ export NODE_NAME=`hostname -f`
    • Node IP:
    $ export NODE_IP=`hostname -i | awk '{print $1}'`
    • Initial cluster token for the ETCD cluster during bootstrap:
    $ export ETCD_TOKEN='PostgreSQL_HA_Cluster_1'
    • ETCD data directory:
    $ export ETCD_DATA_DIR='/var/lib/etcd/postgresql'

  3. Modify the /etc/etcd/etcd.conf configuration file:

    $ echo "
ETCD_NAME=${NODE_NAME}
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER="${NODE_NAME}=http://${NODE_IP}:2380"
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE="new"
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_TOKEN="${ETCD_TOKEN}"
ETCD_INITIAL_ADVERTISE_PEER_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2380"
ETCD_DATA_DIR="${ETCD_DATA_DIR}"
ETCD_LISTEN_PEER_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2380"
ETCD_LISTEN_CLIENT_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2379,http://localhost:2379"
ETCD_ADVERTISE_CLIENT_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2379"
" | sudo tee -a /etc/etcd/etcd.conf

  4. Start the etcd to apply the changes on node1:

    $ sudo systemctl enable --now etcd
$ sudo systemctl start etcd
$ sudo systemctl status etcd

  5. Check the etcd cluster members on node1:

    $ sudo etcdctl member list

    The output resembles the following:

    21d50d7f768f153a: name=default peerURLs=http://10.104.0.1:2380 clientURLs=http://10.104.0.1:2379 isLeader=true

  6. Configure ETCD on node2 and node3:

    This is important to note that even though the procedures are the same, only changing the hosts, each node needs to be individually fully configured before proceeding to the next node.

    We need to add the node to the cluster executing below command on Node1:

    # Execute on Node1
$ sudo etcdctl member add node2 http://10.104.0.2:2380

    The output will be something similar to below one:

    Added member named node2 with ID 10042578c504d052 to cluster

ETCD_NAME="node2"
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER="node2=http://10.104.0.2:2380,node1=http://10.104.0.1:2380"
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE="existing"

Configure node2

  1. Back up the configuration file and export environment variables as described in steps 1-2 of the node1 configuration

  2. Edit the /etc/etcd/etcd.conf configuration file on node2 and add the output from the add command:

    $ echo "
ETCD_NAME="node2"
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER="node1=http://10.0.100.1:2380,node2=http://10.0.100.2:2380"
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE="existing"

ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_TOKEN="${ETCD_TOKEN}"
ETCD_INITIAL_ADVERTISE_PEER_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2380"
ETCD_DATA_DIR="${ETCD_DATA_DIR}"
ETCD_LISTEN_PEER_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2380"
ETCD_LISTEN_CLIENT_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2379,http://localhost:2379"
ETCD_ADVERTISE_CLIENT_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2379"
" | sudo tee -a /etc/etcd/etcd.conf

  3. Start the etcd to apply the changes on node2:

    $ sudo systemctl enable --now etcd
$ sudo systemctl start etcd
$ sudo systemctl status etcd

Configure node3

  1. Add node3 to the cluster. Run the following command on node1:

    $ sudo etcdctl member add node3 http://10.104.0.3:2380

  2. On node3, back up the configuration file and export environment variables as described in steps 1-2 of the node1 configuration

  3. Modify the /etc/etcd/etcd.conf configuration file on node3 and add the output from the add command as follows:

    $ echo "
ETCD_NAME=node3
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER="node1=http://10.104.0.1:2380,node2=http://10.104.0.2:2380,node3=http://10.104.0.3:2380"
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE="existing"  
ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_TOKEN="${ETCD_TOKEN}"
ETCD_INITIAL_ADVERTISE_PEER_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2380"
ETCD_DATA_DIR="${ETCD_DATA_DIR}"
ETCD_LISTEN_PEER_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2380"
ETCD_LISTEN_CLIENT_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2379,http://localhost:2379"
ETCD_ADVERTISE_CLIENT_URLS="http://${NODE_IP}:2379"
" | sudo tee -a /etc/etcd/etcd.conf

  4. Start the etcd service on node3:

    $ sudo systemctl enable --now etcd
$ sudo systemctl start etcd
$ sudo systemctl status etcd

  5. Check the etcd cluster members.

    $ sudo etcdctl member list

  6. Install Percona Distribution for PostgreSQL packages.

Important

Don’t initialize the cluster and start the postgresql service. The cluster initialization and setup are handled by Patroni during the bootsrapping stage.

Configure Patroni

Run the following commands on all nodes. You can do this in parallel:

  1. Export and create environment variables to simplify the config file creation:

    • Node name:
    $ export NODE_NAME=`hostname -f`
    • Node IP:
    $ export NODE_IP=`hostname -i | awk '{print $1}'`
    • Create variables to store the PATH:
    DATA_DIR="/var/lib/pgsql/data/"
PG_BIN_DIR="/usr/pgsql-12/bin"

    NOTE: Check the path to the data and bin folders on your operating system and change it for the variables accordingly.

    • Patroni information:
    NAMESPACE="percona_lab"
SCOPE="cluster_1

  2. Create the directories required by Patroni

    • Create the directory to store the configuration file and make it owned by the postgres user.
    $ sudo mkdir -p /etc/patroni/
$ sudo chown -R  postgres:postgres /etc/patroni/
    • We won’t use the default RHEL to store PostgreSQL data, but will create a data directory for PostgreSQL. We also need to change its ownership to the postgres user and restrict the access to it 
    $ sudo mkdir /data/pgsql -p
$ sudo chown -R postgres:postgres /data/pgsql
$ sudo chmod 700 /data/pgsql

  3. Create the /etc/patroni/patroni.yml configuration file. Add the following configuration:

    echo "
namespace: ${NAMESPACE}
scope: ${SCOPE}
name: ${NODE_NAME}

restapi:
    listen: 0.0.0.0:8008
    connect_address: ${NODE_IP}:8008

etcd:
    host: ${NODE_IP}:2379

bootstrap:
  # this section will be written into Etcd:/<namespace>/<scope>/config after initializing new cluster
  dcs:
      ttl: 30
      loop_wait: 10
      retry_timeout: 10
      maximum_lag_on_failover: 1048576
      slots:
          percona_cluster_1:
          type: physical

      postgresql:
          use_pg_rewind: true
          use_slots: true
          parameters:
              wal_level: replica
              hot_standby: "on"
              wal_keep_segments: 10
              max_wal_senders: 5
              max_replication_slots: 10
              wal_log_hints: "on"
              logging_collector: 'on'

  # some desired options for 'initdb'
  initdb: # Note: It needs to be a list (some options need values, others are switches)
      - encoding: UTF8
      - data-checksums

  pg_hba: # Add following lines to pg_hba.conf after running 'initdb'
      - host replication replicator 127.0.0.1/32 trust
      - host replication replicator 0.0.0.0/0 md5
      - host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5
      - host all all ::0/0 md5

  # Some additional users which needs to be created after initializing new cluster
  users:
      admin:
          password: qaz123
          options:
              - createrole
              - createdb
      percona:
          password: qaz123
          options:
              - createrole
              - createdb 

postgresql:
    cluster_name: cluster_1
    listen: 0.0.0.0:5432
    connect_address: ${NODE_IP}:5432
    data_dir: ${DATADIR}
    bin_dir: ${PG_BIN_DIR}
    pgpass: /tmp/pgpass
    authentication:
        replication:
            username: replicator
            password: replPasswd
        superuser:
            username: postgres
            password: qaz123

    parameters:
        unix_socket_directories: "/var/run/postgresql/"
    create_replica_methods:
        - basebackup
    basebackup:
        checkpoint: 'fast'

tags:
    nofailover: false
    noloadbalance: false
    clonefrom: false
    nosync: false
" | sudo tee -a /etc/patroni/patroni.yml

  4. Check that the systemd unit file patroni.service is created in /etc/systemd/system. If it is created, skip this step.

    If it’s not created, create it manually and specify the following contents within:

    /etc/systemd/system/patroni.service
    [Unit]
Description=Runners to orchestrate a high-availability PostgreSQL
After=syslog.target network.target 

[Service]
Type=simple 

User=postgres
Group=postgres 

# Start the patroni process
ExecStart=/bin/patroni /etc/patroni/patroni.yml 

# Send HUP to reload from patroni.yml
ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID 

# only kill the patroni process, not its children, so it will gracefully stop postgres
KillMode=process 

# Give a reasonable amount of time for the server to start up/shut down
TimeoutSec=30 

# Do not restart the service if it crashes, we want to manually inspect database on failure
Restart=no 

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

  5. Make systemd aware of the new service:

    $ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

  6. Now it’s time to start Patroni. You need the following commands on all nodes but not in parallel. Start with the node1 first, wait for the service to come to live, and then proceed with the other nodes one-by-one, always waiting for them to sync with the primary node:

    $ sudo systemctl enable --now patroni
$ sudo systemctl restart patroni

    When Patroni starts, it initializes PostgreSQL (because the service is not currently running and the data directory is empty) following the directives in the bootstrap section of the configuration file.

  7. Check the service to see if there are errors:

    $ sudo journalctl -fu patroni

    A common error is Patroni complaining about the lack of proper entries in the pg_hba.conf file. If you see such errors, you must manually add or fix the entries in that file and then restart the service.

    Changing the patroni.yml file and restarting the service will not have any effect here because the bootstrap section specifies the configuration to apply when PostgreSQL is first started in the node. It will not repeat the process even if the Patroni configuration file is modified and the service is restarted.

    If Patroni has started properly, you should be able to locally connect to a PostgreSQL node using the following command:

    $ sudo psql -U postgres

psql (13.12)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=#

  8. When all nodes are up and running, you can check the cluster status using the following command:

    $ sudo patronictl -c /etc/patroni/patroni.yml list

    The output on node1 resembles the following:

    + Cluster: cluster_1 --+---------+---------+----+-----------+
| Member | Host        | Role    | State   | TL | Lag in MB |
+--------+-------------+---------+---------+----+-----------+
| node-1 | 10.0.100.1  | Leader  | running |  1 |           |
+--------+-------------+---------+---------+----+-----------+

    On the remaining nodes:

    + Cluster: cluster_1 --+---------+---------+----+-----------+
| Member | Host        | Role    | State   | TL | Lag in MB |
+--------+-------------+---------+---------+----+-----------+
| node-1 | 10.0.100.1  | Leader  | running |  1 |           |
| node-2 | 10.0.100.2  | Replica | running |  1 |         0 |
+--------+-------------+---------+---------+----+-----------+

Configure HAProxy

HAProxy node will accept client connection requests and route those to the active node of the PostgreSQL cluster. This way, a client application doesn’t have to know what node in the underlying cluster is the current primary. All it needs to do is to access a single HAProxy URL and send its read/write requests there. Behind-the-scene, HAProxy routes the connection to a healthy node (as long as there is at least one healthy node available) and ensures that client application requests are never rejected.

HAProxy is capable of routing write requests to the primary node and read requests - to the secondaries in a round-robin fashion so that no secondary instance is unnecessarily loaded. To make this happen, provide different ports in the HAProxy configuration file. In this deployment, writes are routed to port 5000 and reads - to port 5001.

  1. Install HAProxy on the HAProxy-demo node:

    $ sudo yum install percona-haproxy

  2. The HAProxy configuration file path is: /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg. Specify the following configuration in this file.

    global
    maxconn 100

defaults
    log global
    mode tcp
    retries 2
    timeout client 30m
    timeout connect 4s
    timeout server 30m
    timeout check 5s

listen stats
    mode http
    bind *:7000
    stats enable
    stats uri /

listen primary
    bind *:5000
    option httpchk /primary 
    http-check expect status 200
    default-server inter 3s fall 3 rise 2 on-marked-down shutdown-sessions
    server node1 node1:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008
    server node2 node2:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008
    server node3 node3:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008

listen standbys
    balance roundrobin
    bind *:5001
    option httpchk /replica 
    http-check expect status 200
    default-server inter 3s fall 3 rise 2 on-marked-down shutdown-sessions
    server node1 node1:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008
    server node2 node2:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008
    server node3 node3:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008

    HAProxy will use the REST APIs hosted by Patroni to check the health status of each PostgreSQL node and route the requests appropriately.

  3. Enable a SELinux boolean to allow HAProxy to bind to non standard ports:

    $ sudo setsebool -P haproxy_connect_any on

  4. Restart HAProxy:

    $ sudo systemctl restart haproxy

  5. Check the HAProxy logs to see if there are any errors:

    $ sudo journalctl -u haproxy.service -n 100 -f

Next steps

Configure pgBackRest

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