PostgreSQL Replication

Christophe Pettus
PostgreSQL Experts
PerconaLive, April 25, 2018
Christophe Pettus
CEO, PostgreSQL Experts, Inc.

christophe.pettus@pgexperts.com

thebuild.com

twitter @xof
Questions Welcome!
"It's more of a comment…"
"It's more of a comment…"
 Replication Options.
• WAL shipping.

• Streaming replication.

• Trigger-based replication.

• Logical decoding-based replication.

• And exotic animals.

 The Write-Ahead Log.
• A continuous stream of database changes written to local
storage.

• Consists of a series of records, each a specific change to

a specific underlying disk-level item.

• “Update field 3 of ctid (12312,6) of relation OID 918123

to ‘cat’.”

• Written to disk as a series of 16MB “segments,” with large

unpleasant hexadecimal names, like:
000000010000002A00000065
 Crash Recovery.
• The WAL was originally designed to provide crash
recovery.

• On a startup, PostgreSQL goes back to the WAL segment

that contains the last checkpoint, and starts replaying the
activity in it.

• Once it reaches a consistent state again, the database

can start up and receive connections.
 Hm.
• The system doing the recovery doesn’t have to be the
one that crashed, of course.

• So… what if the original system was still in operation?

• We could replay the WAL segments on a different system,

and keep it up to date with the primary?

• And, voilà, WAL shipping was born (in version 8.0).

 WAL Shipping.
• When the primary completes a WAL segment, it runs
archive_command.

• archive_command can do anything, but it usually copies

the file over to the secondary (or to a place the secondary
can get at it).

• The secondary repeatedly runs restore_command (in

recovery.conf) to replay the WAL information.
WAL Shipping: The Good.
• Cheap and cheerful to set up: You just need to be able to
copy files around.

• Works well on slow or unreliable networks, like WANs,

since no persistent connection is required.

• You can use it as a basis for point-in-time recovery, if you

keep WAL information and base backups around to
handle it.

• Works on really old versions of PostgreSQL that you

shouldn’t be running anymore.
WAL Shipping: More Good.
• DDL changes in PostgreSQL are WAL-logged, so…

• … they’re pushed down to secondaries automatically.

• The secondary is a perfect mirror (allowing for replication

lag) of the primary.

• The secondary is readable (if set up right) for read-only

queries.

• Failover is as easy as just promoting the secondary and

letting it come back up; it takes <1 minute, usually.
WAL Shipping: The Bad.
• Secondary is only as up-to-date as the last 16MB WAL
segment: You can lose some changes.

• WAL segments have to be managed lest you run out of

disk space.

• Replicating to multiple secondaries requires some

complex orchestration.

• The secondary cannot be written, at all, including

temporary tables and materialized views.
WAL Shipping: More Bad.
• Since the WAL is a global resource across all databases
in the PostgreSQL server, you cannot pick and choose
anything.

• You must replicate all fields in all columns in all tables in

all the databases.

• You cannot consolidate multiple servers into one using

WAL shipping.

• Cannot replicate between major versions of PostgreSQL,

so can’t use it for zero-downtime upgrades.
Streaming Replication.
• Well, what if we didn’t just ship files, but transmitted the
WAL information down a network connection?

• The secondary could stay much “closer” to the primary.

• And that’s what streaming replication is: The same (pretty

much) WAL information, only transmitted down to the
secondary.
 Streaming Replication: The
Basics.
• recovery.conf is used to “point” the secondary at the
primary.

• The secondary connects to the primary, and receives a

stream of the WAL information.

• Otherwise, largely the same as WAL shipping, with the

same limitations and benefits.
 Stream Replication: The
Good.
• The secondary stays close to the primary, in terms of
transaction activity.

• With (optional) synchronous replication, the chance of a

lost transaction (committed on the primary but not the
secondary) is essentially zero.

• Replicas can cascade for more complex topologies.

WAL-Based Replication
Weirdnesses.
 Replication Delay.
• When a WAL change to the data in a relation comes into a
secondary, and that secondary is running a query that
uses that relation, what should we do?

• If we applied the change “under” the query, the result

could be wrong.

• Option 1: Delay applying the change until the query

completes.

• Option 2: Cancel the query.

 max_standby_*_delay
• Two parameters (one for streaming, one for WAL shipping)
that control how long to wait before cancelling the query.

• Higher settings mean more potential replication lag.

• Advice: Dedicate a server for failover with these set to 0,

and other servers for read-only traffic with higher values.
hot_standby_feedback
• If “on”, sends feedback upstream telling the primary what
tables are being queried on the secondary.

• The primary will then defer vacuuming those to avoid

query cancellations on the secondary.

• This can result in table bloat, if there’s enough query

traffic on the secondary.

• It does not completely eliminate query cancellations.

• In general, it’s a good idea, but monitor bloat.

vacuum_defer_cleanup_age
• Don’t bother.
Trigger-Based Replication.
Trigger-Based Replication.
• WAL-based replication has a lot of restrictions.

• No selectivity on replication, same major version, etc.

• But PostgreSQL has a very elaborate trigger mechanism!

• What if we attached a trigger to each table, caught

update / insert / delete operations, and pushed them to
the secondary that way?
Why, yes, we could do that.
• Actually predated WAL-based replication, in the form of
Slony 1.

• Now we have:

• Slony (C)

• Londiste (Python)

• Bucardo (Perl)

• … plus some others that basically work the same way.

 Triggers: The Good.
• Much more flexible than WAL-based replication.

• Depending on the particular package, can:

• Replicate only some databases.

• Replicate only some tables.

• Replicate only some fields.

• Filter changes based on rules on the primary before

sending them over.
 Triggers: More Good.
• Can build exotic topologies.

• Can consolidate multiple databases into a single

database (for data warehousing, etc.).

• Bucardo (only) does multi-master replication.

• Works between different PostgreSQL versions, so can use

them for zero-downtime upgrading.
 Triggers: The Bad.
• Tedious and fiddly to set up.

• Every table that is going to be replicated needs a primary key

(at least a de facto one).

• Initial copies can take a long time.

• Awkward fit with WAL-based replication for failover.

• All those triggers firing all the time and the log tables required
have a performance impact.

• No automatic DDL change distribution: That’s on you.

 Comparison
• Slony tends to be the highest-performance of the lot.

• … but requires C-language extensions.

• Londiste requires PL/PythonU availability.

• Bucardo can work entirely outside the subscriber (but not

provider) system, thus suitable for RDS.

• Bucardo also supports multi-master and primary key

updates.
 Triggers: Advice.
• If you can use more modern logical decoding-based
replication, use that instead.

• Still useful for major version upgrades, when the old

version <9.4.

• Sometimes required for specialized environments where

you don’t have access to built-in logical replication or the
WAL stream (in specific, RDS).
Logical Decoding.
 Logical Decoding.
• First introduced in PostgreSQL 9.4.

• It’s not a packaged system like streaming replication; it’s

a framework for implementing logical replication and
other fun things.

• Really required 9.6+ to get going.

 How It Works.
• The framework turns WAL records back into SQL-type
operations.

• “Update field 3 of ctid (12312,6) of relation OID 918123 to

‘cat’” becomes “UPDATE menagerie SET
animal_type=‘cat’ WHERE ctid=‘(12312,6)’” (to a first
approximation).

• Doesn’t reconstruct the actual SQL that made the change,

or build actual SQL strings.
 Replication Slots.
• A logical replication slot is a named database object that
“captures” the WAL stream.

• Once created, the framework delivers the decoded WAL

stream to the slot’s specified plug-in, which can do
whatever it wants with it.

• The plug-in reports back to the framework when it has

processed the WAL stream, so that the local WAL
segments can be recycled.
 Replication Slots,
The Horrible Truth
• A replication slot keeps track of the WAL position of its
consumer (in the case of logical replication, the plug-in).

• If the consumer stops consuming, the framework retains

WAL information so it can catch up.

• This results in WAL segments not being recycled.

• So you can run yourself out disk space.

• So, monitor your disk space already!

 Replication Plug-Ins.
• A replication plugin is a bit of C code installed in the primary
server (like any extension) that receives the stream of
decoding WAL records.

• It can do anything it wants with them: logging, auditing,

feeding to an external data system, etc.

• https://github.com/confluentinc/bottledwater-pg
Logical replication into Kafka!

• PostgreSQL ships with a test plugin that provides example

code and logging, but it’s not useful for any actual
production use.
PostgreSQL-to-PostgreSQL
Logical Replication Options.
• On PostgreSQL 10+, built-in logical replication.

• On PostgreSQL 9.4+, pglogical.

• https://www.2ndquadrant.com/en/resources/pglogical/
 The High-Level View.
• Each takes the stream of decoded changes, applies them
at the SQL level.

• This means (most) constraints are enforced, rows are

locked, triggers (can) fire, MVCC happens, etc.

• A database can be both a publisher of changes and a

subscriber to changes.

• A single table can be both a source and target.

• A single table cannot replicate bidirectionally, however.

 General Setup.
• Use pg_dump —schema-only to copy the schema over to
the subscriber node.

• When it first connects, can do an initial bulk copy of the

existing data, followed by replicating data going forward.

• DDL changes are not propagated (pglogical provides a

function to run DDL changes on each node; in-core
leaves it to you).
 Row Identity
• All tables that are to be replicated should have some kind
of row identity.

• Ideally, a primary key or a UNIQUE index.

• pglogical requires either a PK or a single UNIQUE index.

• In-core logical replication can use the entire row value as

to identify the row if all else fails.
 Sequences.
• Sequence values are not replicated (row values set off of a
sequence are, of course).

• pglogical can replicate them in batch as a background

process.

• If consolidating to a single table, use disjoint ranges from the

source databases (or non-sequence keys).

• UUIDs! UUIDs! UUIDs!

• Logical replicas are generally not suitable for failover due to

this restriction.
 TRUNCATE
• In-core logical replication does not replicate TRUNCATE
at all (at present).

• pglogical replicates TRUNCATE, but does not cascade

TRUNCATE CASCADEs.
 Reality Check.
• You can only replicate a “real” table to a “real” table.

• So, no materialized views, views, foreign tables, or

partition root tables.

• If you are using PostgreSQL 10 partitioning, the root table

is not a real table, so cannot participate in logical
replication (either source or destination).

• Old-style partitioning should still be possible with

ENABLE ALWAYS triggers (unverified at press time).
 Uses the WAL, so…
• Cannot replicate temporary or unlogged tables.

• COPY operations are broken into individual INSERTs.

• Individual statements are “unrolled”.

• A single UPDATE changing 10,000 rows will be applied

as 10,000 UPDATEs.
Compare and Contrast
• pglogical has several features in-core replication does
not.

• Flexible conflict handling, row/column filtering,

sequence replication, etc.

• pglogical requires an extension to be built and installed;

not part of the core distribution.

• pglogical is operated by functions; in-core replication

uses SQL statements.
Battle of the Replications
• Only a primary node can be a logical replication publisher or
subscriber.

• If a primary with logical subscribers fails over to a secondary,

the current logical replication state is not passed over to the
secondary.

• So, synchronization problems can happen.

• Changes on the streaming secondary that have not been

pushed down to the logical subscribers, for example.

• PostgreSQL 11 should address this.

 On Amazon RDS?
• Pre version 10, your logical replication options
are… limited.

• RDS supports a somewhat quirky set of logical decoding

plugins.

• No general table-to-table replication at the moment.

• PostgreSQL 10 is now available, and supports in-core

logical replication.
Exotic Animals.
 pgpool2 statement-based
replication.
• pgpool2 can “split” the incoming query stream between
two servers.

• Thus, all operations are applied to both.

• Please do not use this feature.

 Amazon DMS.
• On PostgreSQL, based on logical decoding.

• Primarily designed for migration between different

database system types.

• Does not support some important PostgreSQL types (like

TIMESTAMPTZ).

• Thus, not really useful for PostgreSQL-to-PostgreSQL

replication.
 2nd Quadrant BDR.
• Shares many similarities to pglogical.

• Currently, a closed-source proprietary product.

• 2Q indicated it will be open-source in the future.

• Can do bidirectional (i.e., multi-master) replication.

Other commercial solutions.
• Lots of other commercial solutions.

• Pretty much all trigger-based.

• Generally most useful as packaged solution for between-

database-product migrations.
In Sum!
 Advice?
• For failover, use streaming replication.

• For read-only queries, use streaming replicas that are not

dedicated to failover.

• If you need logical replication:

• Use in-core logical replication unless you need a

pglogical feature.
Thank you!
Questions?
Christophe Pettus
CEO, PostgreSQL Experts, Inc.

christophe.pettus@pgexperts.com

thebuild.com

twitter @xof
pgexperts.com