Create a Highly Available PostgreSQL Cluster Using Patroni and HAProxy

Updated Friday, June 1, 2018 by Kulshekhar Kabra Written by Kulshekhar Kabra

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What is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL (Postgres) is an open-source, fully ACID compliant relational database that runs on all major operating systems. While Postgres is a highly versatile, feature-rich, and powerful database, it doesn’t have a built-in solution for high availability.

This guide shows you how to create a highly available Postgres cluster of three servers using Patroni.

Before You Begin

Familiarize yourself with our Getting Started guide and familiarize yourself with SSH and connecting to your linode.
This guide will use sudo wherever possible. Complete the sections of our Securing Your Server to create a standard user account and harden SSH access.
Update your system:
```
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
```
Create five Linodes on your account, all within the same data center. Take note of each Linode’s private IP address

Note
This guide is written for a non-root user. Commands that require elevated privileges are prefixed with sudo. If you’re not familiar with the sudo command, see the Users and Groups guide.

Install PostgreSQL

Install Postgres on three Linodes in your setup. Because the configuration in this guide uses private IP addresses to communicate between Linodes in the same data center, this setup may not meet certain Highly Available requirements. For more information about private IPs, visit our Remote Access guide.

The examples in this guide assign the private IP addresses of the three Postgres Linodes 192.0.2.11, 192.0.2.12 and 192.0.2.13. To setup a private IP address on a Linode, refer to the Remote Access guide for more information.

On the three Linodes where you want to install Postgres, update the package lists:
```
sudo apt update
```
Install Postgres:
```
sudo apt install postgresql-9.5 -y
```
Upon installation, Postgres automatically runs as a service. Stop the Postgres service so that Patroni can manage it from this point on:
```
sudo systemctl stop postgresql
```
Patroni uses utilities that come installed with Postgres, located in the /usr/lib/postgresql/9.5/bin directory by default on Ubuntu 16.04. Create symbolic links in the PATH to ensure that Patroni can find the utilities:
```
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/postgresql/9.5/bin/* /usr/sbin/
```
Instead of creating symlinks, you can include the /usr/lib/postgresql/9.5/bin directory in your PATH.
Repeat these steps on each of the three Linodes.

Install Patroni

Patroni is an open-source Python package that manages Postgres configuration. It can be configured to handle tasks like replication, backups and restorations.

In this guide, you will use Patroni to:

Configure the Postgres instance running on the same server
Configure replication from master to slaves
Automatically failover to the best slave in case the master goes down.

Install python and pip:
```
sudo apt install python python-pip -y
```
Ensure that you have latest version of the setuptools python package:
```
sudo pip install --upgrade setuptools
```
Use pip to install Patroni:
```
sudo pip install patroni
```
Repeat these steps on each of the three Linodes.

Install etcd

Etcd is a fault-tolerant, distributed key-value store that is used to store the state of the Postgres cluster. Via Patroni, all of the Postgres nodes make use of etcd to keep the Postgres cluster up and running.

In this guide you use a single-server etcd cluster. However, in production, it may be best to use a larger etcd cluster so that one etcd node fails, it doesn’t affect your Postgres servers.

On the Linode where you want etcd installed, update the package lists:
```
sudo apt update
```
Install etcd:
```
sudo apt install etcd -y
```

The remainder of this guide uses 192.0.2.21 as the private IP address of this Linode.

Install HAProxy

When developing an application that uses a database, it can be cumbersome to keep track of the database endpoints if they keep changing. Using HAProxy simplifies this by giving a single endpoint to which you can connect the application.

HAProxy forwards the connection to whichever node is currently the master. It does this using a REST endpoint that Patroni provides. Patroni ensures that, at any given time, only the master Postgres node will appear as online, forcing HAProxy to connect to the correct node.

On the Linode where you want HAProxy installed, update the package lists:
```
sudo apt update
```
Install HAProxy:
```
sudo apt install haproxy -y
```

This guide uses 192.0.2.31 as the private IP address of this server and 203.0.113.1 as its public IP address.

Current Status

At this stage, you should have a total of five Linodes:

Example Private IP Address	Software Installed	Example Public IP Address
192.0.2.11	Postgres, Patroni	-
192.0.2.12	Postgres, Patroni	-
192.0.2.13	Postgres, Patroni	-
192.0.2.21	etcd	-
192.0.2.31	HAProxy	203.0.113.1

Configure etcd

Edit the /etc/default/etcd file to add the following configuration:

/etc/default/etcd

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ETCD_LISTEN_PEER_URLS="http://192.0.2.21:2380"

ETCD_LISTEN_CLIENT_URLS="http://localhost:2379,http://192.0.2.21:2379"

ETCD_INITIAL_ADVERTISE_PEER_URLS="http://192.0.2.21:2380"

ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER="etcd0=http://192.0.2.21:2380,"

ETCD_ADVERTISE_CLIENT_URLS="http://192.0.2.21:2379"

ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_TOKEN="cluster1"

ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE="new"

Save the file, then restart the etcd service:
```
sudo systemctl restart etcd
```

Configure Patroni

Patroni can be configured using a YAML file which can be placed anywhere. In this guide, you will place this file at /etc/patroni.yml.

Create a patroni.yml file on all three Linodes that have Postgres and Patroni installed (192.0.2.11, 192.0.2.12, and 192.0.2.13 in this guide). Change name to something unique, and change listen and connect_address (under postgresql and restapi) to the appropriate values on each Linode.

Edit this file to have the following content:

/etc/patroni.yml

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scope: postgres
namespace: /db/
name: postgresql0

restapi:
    listen: 192.0.2.11:8008
    connect_address: 192.0.2.11:8008

etcd:
    host: 192.0.2.21:2379

bootstrap:
    dcs:
        ttl: 30
        loop_wait: 10
        retry_timeout: 10
        maximum_lag_on_failover: 1048576
        postgresql:
            use_pg_rewind: true

    initdb:
    - encoding: UTF8
    - data-checksums

    pg_hba:
    - host replication replicator 127.0.0.1/32 md5
    - host replication replicator 192.0.2.11/0 md5
    - host replication replicator 192.0.2.12/0 md5
    - host replication replicator 192.0.2.13/0 md5
    - host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5

    users:
        admin:
            password: admin
            options:
                - createrole
                - createdb

postgresql:
    listen: 192.0.2.11:5432
    connect_address: 192.0.2.11:5432
    data_dir: /data/patroni
    pgpass: /tmp/pgpass
    authentication:
        replication:
            username: replicator
            password: rep-pass
        superuser:
            username: postgres
            password: secretpassword
    parameters:
        unix_socket_directories: '.'

tags:
    nofailover: false
    noloadbalance: false
    clonefrom: false
    nosync: false

Make note of the data_dir value in the above file. The postgres user needs the ability to write to this directory. If this directory doesn’t exist, create it:
```
sudo mkdir /data/patroni -p
```

Make postgres the owner of /data/patroni:

sudo chown postgres:postgres /data/patroni

Change the permissions on this directory to make it accessible only to the postgres user:
```
sudo chmod 700 /data/patroni
```
Every option in the above file is configurable. View the latest version of the postgres0.yml file in Patroni’s Github repository.

Create a systemd script that will allow you to start, stop and monitor Patroni. Create a file at /etc/systemd/system/patroni.service with the following content:

/etc/systemd/system/patroni.service

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[Unit]
Description=Runners to orchestrate a high-availability PostgreSQL
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple

User=postgres
Group=postgres

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/patroni /etc/patroni.yml

KillMode=process

TimeoutSec=30

Restart=no

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.targ

If patroni is installed in a location other than /usr/local/bin/patroni on your machine, update the above file accordingly.

Start Patroni and Postgres:
```
sudo systemctl start patroni
```

Check the status of Patroni:

sudo systemctl status patroni

If everything is set up correctly, the output from the first node (leader) will resemble:

● patroni.service - Runners to orchestrate a high-availability PostgreSQL
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/patroni.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2017-07-29 16:49:18 UTC; 8min ago
Main PID: 13097 (patroni)

.
.
.

... INFO: Lock owner: postgresql0; I am postgresql0
... INFO: no action.  i am the leader with the lock

When starting subsequent nodes, the log will resemble:

INFO: no action.  i am a secondary and i am following a leader
Lock owner: postgresql0; I am postgresql2

Repeat these steps on each of the three Linodes with Postgres installed to create a highly available Postgres cluster with one master and two slaves.

Configure HAProxy

With the Postgres cluster set up, you need a way to connect to the master regardless of which of the servers in the cluster is the master. This is where HAProxy comes in. All Postgres clients (your applications, psql, etc.) will connect to HAProxy which will make sure you connect to the master in the cluster.

On the Linode that has HAProxy installed, edit the configuration file at /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg to contain the following:

/etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg

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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 postgres
    bind *:5000
    option httpchk
    http-check expect status 200
    default-server inter 3s fall 3 rise 2 on-marked-down shutdown-sessions
    server postgresql_192.0.2.11_5432 192.0.2.11:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008
    server postgresql_192.0.2.12_5432 192.0.2.12:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008
    server postgresql_192.0.2.13_5432 192.0.2.13:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008

This configuration exposes HAProxy stats on a public URL. In a production setup, it might be better to restrict this to an internal network/localhost and access it via an SSH tunnel.

Restart HAProxy to use the new settings:
```
sudo systemctl restart haproxy
```
If HAProxy fails to start, check for syntax errors:
```
/usr/sbin/haproxy -c -V -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
```

Test the Setup

Connect Postgres clients to the public IP address of the Linode on which you installed HAProxy (in this guide, 203.0.113.1) on port 5000.
You can also connect to the HAProxy Linode on port 7000 to see the HAProxy dashboard:

In the postgres section, the postgresql_192.0.2.11_5432 row is highlighted in green. This indicates that 192.0.2.11 is currently acting as the master.
If you kill the primary Linode (using sudo systemctl stop patroni or by shutting down the server), the dashboard will look similar to:

In the postgres section, the postgresql_192.0.2.11_5432 row is now red and the postgresql_192.0.2.13_5432 row is highlighted in green. This indicates that 192.0.2.13 is currently acting as the master.

Note
In this case, it just so happens that the third Postgres server is promoted to master. This might not always be the case. It is equally likely that the second server may be promoted to master.

When you now bring up the first server, it will rejoin the cluster as a slave and will sync up with the master.

You now have a robust, highly available Postgres cluster ready for use.

Possible Next Steps

While the setup in this guide should go far in making your Postgres deployment highly available, here are steps you can take to improve it further:

Use a larger etcd cluster to improve availability.
Use PgBouncer to pool connections.
Add another HAProxy server and configure IP failover to create a highly available HAProxy cluster.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

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Create a Highly Available PostgreSQL Cluster Using Patroni and HAProxy

What is PostgreSQL?

Before You Begin

Install PostgreSQL

Install Patroni

Install etcd

Install HAProxy

Current Status

Configure etcd

Configure Patroni

Configure HAProxy

Test the Setup

Possible Next Steps

More Information

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