Replication

PostgreSQL relies on replication for high availability, failover, and balancing read loads across multiple nodes. Replication ensures that data written to the primary PostgreSQL database is mirrored on one or more nodes. By virtue of having multiple nodes with an exact copy of the primary database available, the primary database can be replaced with a replica node in the event of a failure or outage on the primary server. Replica nodes can also be used as read only databases (sometimes called “read replicas”), allowing reads to be horizontally scaled by spreading the read query volume across multiple nodes.

TimescaleDB supports replication using PostgreSQL’s built-in streaming replication. Using logical replication with TimescaleDB is not recommended, as it requires schema synchronization between the primary and replica nodes and replicating partition root tables, which are not currently supported.

This tutorial will outline the basic configuration needed to set up streaming replication on one or more replicas, covering both synchronous and asynchronous options. It assumes you have at least two separate instances of TimescaleDB running. If you’re using our Docker Image, we recommend using a PostgreSQL entrypoint script to run the configuration. For our sample Docker configuration and run scripts, check out our Streaming Replication Docker Repository.

TIP:PostgreSQL achieves streaming replication by having replicas continuously stream the WAL from the primary database. See the official replication documentation for details. For more information about how PostgreSQL implements Write-Ahead Logging, see their WAL Documentation.

Configure the Primary Database

Create a PostgreSQL user with a role that allows it to initialize streaming replication. This will be the user each replica uses to stream from the primary database. Run the command as the postgres user, or another user that is configured with superuser privileges on the database you’re working with.

  1. SET password_encryption = 'scram-sha-256';
  2. CREATE ROLE repuser WITH REPLICATION PASSWORD 'password' LOGIN;

WARNING:scram-sha-256 is PostgreSQL’s most secure password based authentication, but it is only available in PostgreSQL 10 and above. If you are using an earlier version, consider using md5 authentication by replacing the first line in the above SQL with SET password_encryption = true; and changing the AUTH_METHOD in pg_hba (see Configure Host Based Authentication) to md5.

Configure Replication Parameters

There are several replication settings that must be added to postgresql.conf (if you’re unsure of where PostgreSQL is reading postgresql.conf from, just execute show config_file; in a psql shell). You can either comment out the existing settings in postgresql.conf and add the desired value, or you can simply append the desired settings to the postgresql.conf.

synchronous_commit has a number of settings that strongly impact data consistency and performance. For this tutorial, we’ll focus on the common setting of turning synchronous_commit off. For more detail on the different modes, see Replication Modes

  • max_wal_senders - The total number of concurrent connections from replicas or backup clients. At the very least, this should equal the number of replicas you intend to have.
  • wal_level - The amount of information written to the PostgreSQL Write-Ahead Log (WAL). For replication to work, there needs to be enough data in the WAL to support archiving and replication. The default level of replica covers this, but it bears mentioning here since it is an absolute requirement for streaming replication.
  • max_replication_slots - The total number of replication slots the primary database can support. See below for more information about replication slots.
  • listen_address - Since remote replicas will be connecting to the primary to stream the WAL, we’ll need to make sure that the primary is not just listening on the local loopback.

Sample Replication Configuration

The most common streaming replication use case is asynchronous replication with one or more replicas. We’ll use that as that as our sample configuration.

In cases where you need stronger consistency on the replicas or where your query load is heavy enough to cause significant lag between the primary and replica nodes in asyncronous mode, you may want to consider one of the synchronous replication configurations.

Asynchronous Replication with 1 Replica

  1. listen_addresses = '*'
  2. wal_level = replica
  3. max_wal_senders = 1
  4. max_replication_slots = 1
  5. synchronous_commit = off

In this example, the WAL will be streamed to the replica, but the primary server will not wait for confirmation that the WAL has been written to disk on either the primary or the replica. This is the most performant replication configuration, but it does carry the risk of a small amount of data loss in the event of a system crash. It also makes no guarantees that the replica will be fully up to date with the primary, which could cause inconsistencies between read queries on the primary and the replica.

For replication settings to apply, you must restart PostgreSQL, not just reload the configuration file. This needs to be done before creating replication slots in the next step.

Create Replication Slots

After configuring postgresql.conf and restarting PostgreSQL, create a replication slot for each replica. Replication slots ensure that the primary does not delete segments from the WAL until they have been received by the replicas. This is crucial for cases where a replica goes down for extended periods of time — without verifying that a WAL segment has already been consumed by a replica, the primary may delete data needed for replication. To some extent, you can achieve this using archiving, but replication slots provide the strongest protection of WAL data for streaming replication. The name of the slot is arbitrary — we’ll call the slot for this replica replica_1_slot.

  1. SELECT * FROM pg_create_physical_replication_slot('replica_1_slot');

Configure Host Based Authentication

Configure the pg_hba.conf file (run show hba_file; in a psql shell if you’re unsure of its location) to accept connections from the replication user on the host of each replica.

  1. # TYPE     DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS METHOD               AUTH_METHOD
  2. host       replication     repuser         <REPLICATION_HOST_IP>/32     scram-sha-256

TIP:The above settings will restrict replication connections to traffic coming from REPLICATION_HOST_IP as the PostgreSQL user repuser with a valid password. REPLICATION_HOST_IP will be able to initiate streaming replication from that machine without additional credentials. You may want to change the address and method values to match your security and network settings. Read more about pg_hba.conf in the official documentation.

Configure the Replica Database

Replicas work by streaming the primary server’s WAL log and replaying its transactions in what PostgreSQL calls “recovery mode”. Before this can happen, the replica needs to be in a state where it can replay the log. This is achieved by restoring the replica from a base backup of the primary instance.

Create a Base Backup on the Replica

Stop PostgreSQL. If the replica’s PostgreSQL database already has data, you will need to remove it prior to running the backup. This can be done by removing the contents of the PostgreSQL data directory. To determine the location of the data directory, run show data_directory; in a psql shell.

  1. rm -rf <DATA_DIRECTORY>/*

Now run the pg_basebackup command using the IP address of the primary database along with the replication username.

  1. pg_basebackup -h <PRIMARY_IP> -D <DATA_DIRECTORY> -U repuser -vP -W

WARNING:The -W flag will prompt you for a password on the command line. This may cause problems for automated setups. If you are using password based authentication in an automated setup, you may need to make use of a pgpass file.

When the backup finishes, create a recovery.conf file in your data directory, ensuring it has the proper permissions. When PostgreSQL finds a recovery.conf file in its data directory, it knows to start up in recovery mode and begin streaming the WAL through the replication protocol.

  1. touch <DATA_DIRECTORY>/recovery.conf
  2. chmod 0600 <DATA_DIRECTORY>/recovery.conf

Replication and Recovery Settings

Add settings for commmunicating with the primary server to recovery.conf. In streaming replication, the application_name in primary_conninfo should be the same as the name used in the primary’s synchronous_standby_names settings.

  1. standby_mode = on # Ensures that the replica continues to fetch WAL records from the primary
  2. primary_conninfo = 'host= port=5432 user=repuser password= application_name=r1'
  3. primary_slot_name = 'replica_1_slot' # Name of the replication slot we created on the master

Next, update the postgresql.conf file to mirror the configuration of the primary database. For asynchronous replication, this would look like:

  1. hot_standby = on
  2. wal_level = replica
  3. max_wal_senders = 2
  4. max_replication_slots = 2
  5. synchronous_commit = off

WARNING:In order to allow reads on the replica, hot_standby must be set to on. This allows read-only queries on the replica. By default, this setting is set to on in PostgreSQL 10, but in earlier versions it defaults to off.

Finally, restart PostgreSQL. At this point, the replica should be fully synchronized with the primary database and prepared to stream from it. The logs on the replica should look something like this:

  1. LOG:  database system was shut down in recovery at 2018-03-09 18:36:23 UTC
  2. LOG:  entering standby mode
  3. LOG:  redo starts at 0/2000028
  4. LOG:  consistent recovery state reached at 0/3000000
  5. LOG:  database system is ready to accept read only connections
  6. LOG:  started streaming WAL from primary at 0/3000000 on timeline 1

Any clients will be able to perform reads on the replica. Verify this by running inserts, updates, or other modifications to your data on the primary and querying the replica to ensure they have been properly copied over. This is fully compatible with TimescaleDB’s functionality, provided you set up TimescaleDB on the primary database.

Configure Replication Modes

This walkthrough gets asynchronous streaming replication working, but in many cases stronger consistency between the primary and replicas is required. Under heavy workloads, replicas can lag far behind the primary, providing stale data to clients reading from the replicas. Moreover, in cases where any data loss is fatal, asynchronous replication may not provide enough of a durability guarantee. Luckily synchronous_commit has several options with varying consistency/performance tradeoffs:

WARNING:If synchronous_standby_names is empty, the settings on, remote_apply, remote_write and local all provide the same synchronization level: transaction commits only wait for local flush to disk.

  • on - Default value. The server will not return “success” until the WAL transaction has been written to disk on the primary and any replicas.
  • off - The server will return “success” when the WAL transaction has been sent to the operating system to write to the WAL on disk on the primary, but will not wait for the operating system to actually write it. This can cause a small amount of data loss if the server crashes when some data has not been written, but it will not result in data corruption. Turning synchronous_commit off is a well known PostgreSQL optimization for workloads that can withstand some data loss in the event of a system crash.
  • local - Enforces on behavior only on the primary server.
  • remote_write - The database will return “success” to a client when the WAL record has been sent to the operating system for writing to the WAL on the replicas, but before confirmation that the record has actually been persisted to disk. This is basically asynchronous commit except it waits for the replicas as well as the primary. In practice, the extra wait time incurred waiting for the replicas significantly decreases replication lag.
  • remote_apply - Requires confirmation that the WAL records have been written to the WAL and applied to the databases on all replicas. This provides the strongest consistency of any of the synchronous_commit options. In this mode, replicas will always reflect the latest state of the primary, and the concept of replication lag (see Replication Diagnostics) is basically non-existent.

This matrix visualizes the level of consistency each mode provides:

ModeWAL Sent to OS (Primary)WAL Persisted (Primary)WAL Sent to OS (Primary + Replicas)WAL Persisted (Primary + Replicas)Transaction Applied (Primary + Replicas)
OffX
LocalXX
Remote WriteXXX
OnXXXX
Remote ApplyXXXXX

An important complementary setting to synchronous_commit is synchronous_standby_names. This setting lists the names of all replicas the primary database will support for synchronous replication, and configures how the primary database will wait for them. The setting supports several different formats:

  • FIRST num_sync (replica_name_1, replica_name_2) - This will wait for confirmation from the first num_sync replicas before returning “success”. The list of replica_names determines the relative priority of the replicas. Replica names are determined by the application_name setting on the replicas.
  • ANY num_sync (replica_name_1, replica_name_2) - This will wait for confirmation from num_sync replicas in the provided list, regardless of their priority/position in the list. This is essentially a quorum function.

WARNING:Any synchronous replication mode will force the primary to wait until all required replicas have written the WAL or applied the database transaction, depending on the synchronous_commit level. This could cause the primary to hang indefinitely if a required replica crashes. When the replica reconnects, it will replay any of the WAL it needs to catch up. Only then will the primary be able to resume writes. To mitigate this, provision more than the amount of nodes required under the synchronous_standby_names setting and list them in the FIRST or ANY clauses. This will allow the primary to move forward as long as a quorum of replicas have written the most recent WAL transaction. Replicas that were out of service will be able to reconnect and replay the missed WAL transactions asynchronously.

View Replication Diagnostics

PostgreSQL provides a valuable view for getting information about each replica — pg_stat_replication. Run select * from pg_stat_replication; from the primary database to view this data. The output looks like this:

  1. -[ RECORD 1 ]----+------------------------------
  2. pid              | 52343
  3. usesysid         | 16384
  4. usename          | repuser
  5. application_name | r2
  6. client_addr      | 10.0.13.6
  7. client_hostname  |
  8. client_port      | 59610
  9. backend_start    | 2018-02-07 19:07:15.261213+00
  10. backend_xmin     |
  11. state            | streaming
  12. sent_lsn         | 16B/43DB36A8
  13. write_lsn        | 16B/43DB36A8
  14. flush_lsn        | 16B/43DB36A8
  15. replay_lsn       | 16B/43107C28
  16. write_lag        | 00:00:00.009966
  17. flush_lag        | 00:00:00.03208
  18. replay_lag       | 00:00:00.43537
  19. sync_priority    | 2
  20. sync_state       | sync
  21. -[ RECORD 2 ]----+------------------------------
  22. pid              | 54498
  23. usesysid         | 16384
  24. usename          | repuser
  25. application_name | r1
  26. client_addr      | 10.0.13.5
  27. client_hostname  |
  28. client_port      | 43402
  29. backend_start    | 2018-02-07 19:45:41.410929+00
  30. backend_xmin     |
  31. state            | streaming
  32. sent_lsn         | 16B/43DB36A8
  33. write_lsn        | 16B/43DB36A8
  34. flush_lsn        | 16B/43DB36A8
  35. replay_lsn       | 16B/42C3B9C8
  36. write_lag        | 00:00:00.019736
  37. flush_lag        | 00:00:00.044073
  38. replay_lag       | 00:00:00.644004
  39. sync_priority    | 1
  40. sync_state       | sync

This view is particularly useful for calculating replication lag, which measures how far behind the primary the current state of the replica is. The replay_lag field gives a measure of the seconds between the most recent WAL transaction on the primary and the last reported database commit on the replica. Coupled with write_lag and flush_lag, this provides insight into how far behind the replica is. The *_lsn fields also come in handy, allowing you to compare WAL locations between the primary and the replicas. Finally, the state field is useful for determining exactly what each replica is currently doing (available modes are startup, catchup, streaming, backup, and stopping).

Failover

PostgreSQL offers failover functionality (i.e., promoting the replica to the primary in the event of a failure on the primary) through pg_ctl or the trigger_file, but it does not provide out-of-the-box support for automatic failover. Read more in the PostgreSQL failover documentation). patroni offers a configurable high availability solution with automatic failover functionality.