Continuous archiving can be used to create a high availability (HA) cluster configuration with one or more standby servers ready to take over operations if the primary server fails. This capability is widely referred to as warm standby or log shipping.
The primary and standby server work together to provide this capability, though the servers are only loosely coupled. The primary server operates in continuous archiving mode, while each standby server operates in continuous recovery mode, reading the WAL files from the primary. No changes to the database tables are required to enable this capability, so it offers low administration overhead compared to some other replication solutions. This configuration also has relatively low performance impact on the primary server.
Directly moving WAL records from one database server to another is typically described as log shipping. PostgreSQL implements file-based log shipping by transferring WAL records one file (WAL segment) at a time. WAL files (16MB) can be shipped easily and cheaply over any distance, whether it be to an adjacent system, another system at the same site, or another system on the far side of the globe. The bandwidth required for this technique varies according to the transaction rate of the primary server. Record-based log shipping is more granular and streams WAL changes incrementally over a network connection (see Section 27.2.5).
It should be noted that log shipping is asynchronous, i.e., the WAL records are shipped after transaction commit. As a result, there is a window for data loss should the primary server suffer a catastrophic failure; transactions not yet shipped will be lost. The size of the data loss window in file-based log shipping can be limited by use of the archive_timeout parameter, which can be set as low as a few seconds. However such a low setting will substantially increase the bandwidth required for file shipping. Streaming replication (see Section 27.2.5) allows a much smaller window of data loss.
Recovery performance is sufficiently good that the standby will typically be only moments away from full availability once it has been activated. As a result, this is called a warm standby configuration which offers high availability. Restoring a server from an archived base backup and rollforward will take considerably longer, so that technique only offers a solution for disaster recovery, not high availability. A standby server can also be used for read-only queries, in which case it is called a hot standby server. See Section 27.4 for more information.
It is usually wise to create the primary and standby servers so that they are as similar as possible, at least from the perspective of the database server. In particular, the path names associated with tablespaces will be passed across unmodified, so both primary and standby servers must have the same mount paths for tablespaces if that feature is used. Keep in mind that if CREATE TABLESPACE is executed on the primary, any new mount point needed for it must be created on the primary and all standby servers before the command is executed. Hardware need not be exactly the same, but experience shows that maintaining two identical systems is easier than maintaining two dissimilar ones over the lifetime of the application and system. In any case the hardware architecture must be the same — shipping from, say, a 32-bit to a 64-bit system will not work.
In general, log shipping between servers running different major PostgreSQL release levels is not possible. It is the policy of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group not to make changes to disk formats during minor release upgrades, so it is likely that running different minor release levels on primary and standby servers will work successfully. However, no formal support for that is offered and you are advised to keep primary and standby servers at the same release level as much as possible. When updating to a new minor release, the safest policy is to update the standby servers first — a new minor release is more likely to be able to read WAL files from a previous minor release than vice versa.
A server enters standby mode if a standby.signal file exists in the data directory when the server is started.
In standby mode, the server continuously applies WAL received from the primary server. The standby server can read WAL from a WAL archive (see restore_command) or directly from the primary over a TCP connection (streaming replication). The standby server will also attempt to restore any WAL found in the standby cluster's pg_wal directory. That typically happens after a server restart, when the standby replays again WAL that was streamed from the primary before the restart, but you can also manually copy files to pg_wal at any time to have them replayed.
At startup, the standby begins by restoring all WAL available in the archive location, calling restore_command. Once it reaches the end of WAL available there and restore_command fails, it tries to restore any WAL available in the pg_wal directory. If that fails, and streaming replication has been configured, the standby tries to connect to the primary server and start streaming WAL from the last valid record found in archive or pg_wal. If that fails or streaming replication is not configured, or if the connection is later disconnected, the standby goes back to step 1 and tries to restore the file from the archive again. This loop of retries from the archive, pg_wal, and via streaming replication goes on until the server is stopped or is promoted.
Standby mode is exited and the server switches to normal operation when pg_ctl promote is run, pg_promote() is called, or a trigger file is found (promote_trigger_file). Before failover, any WAL immediately available in the archive or in pg_wal will be restored, but no attempt is made to connect to the primary.
Set up continuous archiving on the primary to an archive directory accessible from the standby, as described in Section 26.3. The archive location should be accessible from the standby even when the primary is down, i.e., it should reside on the standby server itself or another trusted server, not on the primary server.
If you want to use streaming replication, set up authentication on the primary server to allow replication connections from the standby server(s); that is, create a role and provide a suitable entry or entries in pg_hba.conf with the database field set to replication. Also ensure max_wal_senders is set to a sufficiently large value in the configuration file of the primary server. If replication slots will be used, ensure that max_replication_slots is set sufficiently high as well.
Take a base backup as described in Section 26.3.2 to bootstrap the standby server.
To set up the standby server, restore the base backup taken from primary server (see Section 26.3.4). Create a file standby.signal in the standby's cluster data directory. Set restore_command to a simple command to copy files from the WAL archive. If you plan to have multiple standby servers for high availability purposes, make sure that recovery_target_timeline is set to latest (the default), to make the standby server follow the timeline change that occurs at failover to another standby.
restore_command should return immediately if the file does not exist; the server will retry the command again if necessary.
If you want to use streaming replication, fill in primary_conninfo with a libpq connection string, including the host name (or IP address) and any additional details needed to connect to the primary server. If the primary needs a password for authentication, the password needs to be specified in primary_conninfo as well.
If you're setting up the standby server for high availability purposes, set up WAL archiving, connections and authentication like the primary server, because the standby server will work as a primary server after failover.
If you're using a WAL archive, its size can be minimized using the archive_cleanup_command parameter to remove files that are no longer required by the standby server. The pg_archivecleanup utility is designed specifically to be used with archive_cleanup_command in typical single-standby configurations, see pg_archivecleanup. Note however, that if you're using the archive for backup purposes, you need to retain files needed to recover from at least the latest base backup, even if they're no longer needed by the standby.
A simple example of configuration is:
primary_conninfo = 'host=192.168.1.50 port=5432 user=foo password=foopass options=''-c wal_sender_timeout=5000''' restore_command = 'cp /path/to/archive/%f %p' archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup /path/to/archive %r'
You can have any number of standby servers, but if you use streaming replication, make sure you set max_wal_senders high enough in the primary to allow them to be connected simultaneously.
Streaming replication allows a standby server to stay more up-to-date than is possible with file-based log shipping. The standby connects to the primary, which streams WAL records to the standby as they're generated, without waiting for the WAL file to be filled.
Streaming replication is asynchronous by default (see Section 27.2.8), in which case there is a small delay between committing a transaction in the primary and the changes becoming visible in the standby. This delay is however much smaller than with file-based log shipping, typically under one second assuming the standby is powerful enough to keep up with the load. With streaming replication, archive_timeout is not required to reduce the data loss window.
If you use streaming replication without file-based continuous archiving, the server might recycle old WAL segments before the standby has received them. If this occurs, the standby will need to be reinitialized from a new base backup. You can avoid this by setting wal_keep_size to a value large enough to ensure that WAL segments are not recycled too early, or by configuring a replication slot for the standby. If you set up a WAL archive that's accessible from the standby, these solutions are not required, since the standby can always use the archive to catch up provided it retains enough segments.
To use streaming replication, set up a file-based log-shipping standby server as described in Section 27.2. The step that turns a file-based log-shipping standby into streaming replication standby is setting the primary_conninfo setting to point to the primary server. Set listen_addresses and authentication options (see pg_hba.conf) on the primary so that the standby server can connect to the replication pseudo-database on the primary server (see Section 27.2.5.1).
On systems that support the keepalive socket option, setting tcp_keepalives_idle, tcp_keepalives_interval and tcp_keepalives_count helps the primary promptly notice a broken connection.
Set the maximum number of concurrent connections from the standby servers (see max_wal_senders for details).
When the standby is started and primary_conninfo is set correctly, the standby will connect to the primary after replaying all WAL files available in the archive. If the connection is established successfully, you will see a walreceiver in the standby, and a corresponding walsender process in the primary.
It is very important that the access privileges for replication be set up so that only trusted users can read the WAL stream, because it is easy to extract privileged information from it. Standby servers must authenticate to the primary as an account that has the REPLICATION privilege or a superuser. It is recommended to create a dedicated user account with REPLICATION and LOGIN privileges for replication. While REPLICATION privilege gives very high permissions, it does not allow the user to modify any data on the primary system, which the SUPERUSER privilege does.
Client authentication for replication is controlled by a pg_hba.conf record specifying replication in the database field. For example, if the standby is running on host IP 192.168.1.100 and the account name for replication is foo, the administrator can add the following line to the pg_hba.conf file on the primary:
# Allow the user "foo" from host 192.168.1.100 to connect to the primary # as a replication standby if the user's password is correctly supplied. # # TYPE DATABASE USER ADDRESS METHOD host replication foo 192.168.1.100/32 md5
The host name and port number of the primary, connection user name, and password are specified in the primary_conninfo. The password can also be set in the ~/.pgpass file on the standby (specify replication in the database field). For example, if the primary is running on host IP 192.168.1.50, port 5432, the account name for replication is foo, and the password is foopass, the administrator can add the following line to the postgresql.conf file on the standby:
# The standby connects to the primary that is running on host 192.168.1.50 # and port 5432 as the user "foo" whose password is "foopass". primary_conninfo = 'host=192.168.1.50 port=5432 user=foo password=foopass'
An important health indicator of streaming replication is the amount of WAL records generated in the primary, but not yet applied in the standby. You can calculate this lag by comparing the current WAL write location on the primary with the last WAL location received by the standby. These locations can be retrieved using pg_current_wal_lsn on the primary and pg_last_wal_receive_lsn on the standby, respectively (see Table 9.89 and Table 9.90 for details). The last WAL receive location in the standby is also displayed in the process status of the WAL receiver process, displayed using the ps command (see Section 28.1 for details).
You can retrieve a list of WAL sender processes via the pg_stat_replication view. Large differences between pg_current_wal_lsn and the view's