EDB Postgres Failover Manager Guide

 

EDB Postgres Failover Manager Version 3.3

 

October 23, 2018

 

 

1 Introduction

EDB Postgres Failover Manager (EFM) is a high-availability module from EnterpriseDB that enables a Postgres Master node to automatically failover to a Standby node in the event of a software or hardware failure on the Master.

This guide provides information about installing, configuring and using Failover Manager 3.3.

This document uses Postgres to mean either the PostgreSQL or EDB Postgres Advanced Server database. For more information about using EDB Postgres products, please visit the EnterpriseDB website at:

http://www.enterprisedb.com/documentation

1.1 What’s New

The following changes have been made to EDB Postgres Failover Manager to create version 3.3:

•	Failover Manager offers support for syslog logging; for more information, see Section 6.1.

•	Failover Manager offers new logging levels; for more information about logging, see Section 6.

•	You can now specify a hostname in the virtualIP property; for more information, see Section 3.5.1.1.

•	You can use the check.vip.before.promotion property to fine tune failover behavior. For more information, see Section 3.5.1.1.

•	The timestamp format in agent log file entries has changed. The new format is:

2018-09-18 16:11:30 com.enterprisedb.efm.Environment doInit INFO: Message

If your client applications or scripts refer to the timestamp, you should update the references accordingly.

1.2 Typographical Conventions Used in this Guide

Certain typographical conventions are used in this manual to clarify the meaning and usage of various commands, statements, programs, examples, etc. This section provides a summary of these conventions.

In the following descriptions a term refers to any word or group of words that are language keywords, user-supplied values, literals, etc. A term’s exact meaning depends upon the context in which it is used.

•	Italic font introduces a new term, typically, in the sentence that defines it for the first time.

•	Fixed-width (mono-spaced) font is used for terms that must be given literally such as SQL commands, specific table and column names used in the examples, programming language keywords, etc. For example, SELECT * FROM emp;

•	Italic fixed-width font is used for terms for which the user must substitute values in actual usage. For example, DELETE FROM table_name;

•	A vertical pipe | denotes a choice between the terms on either side of the pipe. A vertical pipe is used to separate two or more alternative terms within square brackets (optional choices) or braces (one mandatory choice).

•	Square brackets [ ] denote that one or none of the enclosed term(s) may be substituted. For example, [ a | b ], means choose one of “a” or “b” or neither of the two.

•	Braces {} denote that exactly one of the enclosed alternatives must be specified. For example, { a | b }, means exactly one of “a” or “b” must be specified.

•	Ellipses ... denote that the proceeding term may be repeated. For example, [ a | b ] ... means that you may have the sequence, “b a a b a”.

2 Failover Manager - Overview

An EDB Postgres Failover Manager (EFM) cluster is comprised of Failover Manager processes that reside on the following hosts on a network:

•	A Master node - The Master node is the primary database server that is servicing database clients.

•	One or more Standby nodes - A Standby node is a streaming replication server associated with the Master node.

•

A Witness node - The Witness node confirms assertions of either the Master or a Standby in a failover scenario. A cluster does not need a dedicated witness node if the cluster contains three or more nodes; if you do not have a third cluster member that is a database host, you can add a dedicated Witness node.

Traditionally, a cluster is a single instance of Postgres managing multiple databases. In this document, the term cluster refers to a Failover Manager cluster. A Failover Manager cluster consists of a Master agent, one or more Standby agents, and an optional Witness agent that reside on servers in a cloud or on a traditional network and communicate using the JGroups toolkit.

Figure 2.1 - A FM scenario employing a Virtual IP address.

When a non-witness agent starts, it connects to the local database and checks the state of the database:

•	If the agent cannot reach the database, it will start in idle mode.

•	If it finds that the database is in recovery, the agent assumes the role of standby;

•	If the database is not in recovery, the agent assumes the role of master.

In the event of a failover, Failover Manager attempts to ensure that the promoted standby is the most up-to-date standby in the cluster; please note that data loss is possible if the standby node is not in sync with the master node.

JGroups provides technology that allows Failover Manager to create clusters whose member nodes can communicate with each other and detect node failures. For more information about JGroups, visit the official project site at:

http://www.jgroups.org

Figure 2.1 illustrates a Failover Manager cluster that employs a virtual IP address. You can use a load balancer in place of a virtual IP address if you provide your own fencing script to re-configure the load balancer in the event of a failure. For more information about using Failover Manager with a virtual IP address, see Section 3.6. For more information about using a fencing script, see Section 3.5.1.

2.1 Supported Platforms

Failover Manager 3.3 is supported on EDB Postgres Advanced Server or PostgreSQL (version 9.3 and higher) installations running on:

•	CentOS 6.x and 7.x

•	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x and 7.x

•	Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.x and 7.x

•	Red Hat Enterprise Linux (IBM Power8 Little Endian or ppc64le) 7.x

•

Debian 9

•

SLES 12

•	Ubuntu 18.04

2.2 Prerequisites

Before configuring a Failover Manager cluster, you must satisfy the prerequisites described below.

Install Java 1.8 (or later)

Before using Failover Manager, you must first install Java (version 1.8 or later). Installation instructions for Java are platform specific; for more information, visit:

https://openjdk.java.net/

Provide an SMTP Server

You can receive notifications from Failover Manager as specified by a user-defined notification script, by email, or both.

•	If you are using email notifications, an SMTP server must be running on each node of the Failover Manager scenario.

•	If you provide a value in the script.notification property, you can leave the user.email field blank; an SMTP server is not required.

If an event occurs, Failover Manager invokes the script (if provided), and sends a notification email to any email addresses specified in the user.email parameter of the cluster properties file. For more information about using an SMTP server, visit:

https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation

For more information, see Section 3.5.1.1.

Configure Streaming Replication

Failover Manager requires that PostgreSQL streaming replication be configured between the Master node and the Standby node or nodes. Failover Manager does not support other types of replication.

Unless specified with the -sourcenode option, a recovery.conf file is copied from a random standby node to the stopped master during switchover. You should ensure that the paths within the recovery.conf files on your standby nodes are consistent before performing a switchover. For more information about the -sourcenode option, please see Section 4.1.4.

Please note that Failover Manager does not support automatic reconfiguration of the standby databases after a failover if you use replication slots to manage your WAL segments. If you use replication slots, you should set the auto.reconfigure parameter to false, and manually reconfigure the standby servers in the event of a failover.

Modify the pg_hba.conf File

You must modify the pg_hba.conf file on the Master and Standby nodes, adding entries that allow communication between the all of the nodes in the cluster. The following example demonstrates entries that might be made to the pg_hba.conf file on the Master node:

# access for itself
host fmdb efm 127.0.0.1/32 md5
# access for standby
host fmdb efm 192.168.27.1/32 md5
# access for witness
host fmdb efm 192.168.27.34/32 md5

Where:

efm specifies the name of a valid database user.

fmdb specifies the name of a database to which the efm user may connect.

For more information about the properties file, see Section 3.5.1.

By default, the pg_hba.conf file resides in the data directory, under your Postgres installation. After modifying the pg_hba.conf file, you must reload the configuration file on each node for the changes to take effect. You can use the following command:

# systemctl reload edb-as-x

Where x specifies the Postgres version.

Using Autostart for the Database Servers

If a Master node reboots, Failover Manager may detect the database is down on the Master node and promote a Standby node to the role of Master. If this happens, the Failover Manager agent on the (rebooted) Master node will not get a chance to write the recovery.conf file; the rebooted Master node will return to the cluster as a second Master node.

To prevent this, start the Failover Manager agent before starting the database server. The agent will start in idle mode, and check to see if there is already a master in the cluster. If there is a master node, the agent will verify that a recovery.conf file exists, and the database will not start as a second master.

Ensure Communication Through Firewalls

If a Linux firewall (i.e. iptables) is enabled on the host of a Failover Manager node, you may need to add rules to the firewall configuration that allow tcp communication between the Failover Manager processes in the cluster. For example:

# iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 7800:7810 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/service iptables save

The command shown above opens a small range of ports (7800 through 7810). Failover Manager will connect via the port that corresponds to the port specified in the cluster properties file.

Ensure that the db.user has Sufficient Privileges

The database user specified in the efm.properties file must have sufficient privileges to invoke the following functions on behalf of Failover Manager:

pg_current_wal_lsn()

pg_last_wal_replay_lsn()

pg_wal_replay_pause()

pg_is_wal_replay_paused()

pg_wal_replay_resume()

For detailed information about each of these functions, please see the PostgreSQL core documentation, available at:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/index.html

2.3 Tutorial – Configuring a Simple Failover Manager Cluster

This tutorial describes quickly configuring a Failover Manager cluster in a test environment. Other sections in this guide provide key information that you should read and understand before configuring Failover Manager for a production deployment.

This tutorial assumes that:

•	A database server is running and streaming replication is set up between a master and one or two standby nodes.

•	You have installed Failover Manager on each node. For more information about installing Failover Manager, see Section 3.

The example that follows creates a cluster named efm.

You should start the configuration process on a master or standby node. Then, copy the configuration files to other nodes to save time.

Step 1: Create Working Configuration Files

Copy the provided sample files to create EFM configuration files, and correct the ownership:

cd /etc/edb/efm-3.3
cp efm.properties.in efm.properties
cp efm.nodes.in efm.nodes
chown efm:efm efm.properties
chown efm:efm efm.nodes

Step 2: Create an Encrypted Password

Create the encrypted password (needed for the properties file):

/usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/efm encrypt efm

Follow the onscreen instructions to produce the encrypted version of your database password.

Step 3: Update the efm.properties File

The cluster_name.properties file contains parameters that specify connection properties and behaviors for your Failover Manager cluster. Modifications to property settings are applied when Failover Manager starts.

The following properties are the minimal properties required to configure a Failover Manager cluster. If you are configuring a production system, please see Section 3.5.1 for a complete list of properties.

Database connection properties (needed even on the witness so it can connect to other databases when needed):

db.user
db.password.encrypted
db.port
db.database

Owner of the data directory (usually postgres or enterprisedb):

db.service.owner

Only one of the following properties is needed. If you provide the service name, EFM will use a service command to control the database server when necessary; if you provide the location of the Postgres bin directory, EFM will use pg_ctl to control the database server.

db.service.name
db.bin

The data directory in which EFM will find or create recovery.conf files:

db.recovery.conf.dir

Set to receive email notifications (the notification text is also included in the agent log):

user.email

This is the local address of the node and the port to use for EFM. Other nodes will use this address to reach the agent, and the agent will also use this address for connecting to the local database (as opposed to connecting to localhost). An example of the format is included below:

bind.address=1.2.3.4:7800

Set this property to true on a witness node and false if it is a master or standby:

is.witness

If you are running on a network without access to the Internet, change this to an address that is available on your network:

pingServerIp=8.8.8.8

When configuring a production cluster, the following properties can be either true or false depending on your system configuration and usage. Set them both to true to simplify startup if you're configuring an EFM test cluster.

auto.allow.hosts=true
stable.nodes.file=true

Step 4: Update the efm.nodes File

The cluster_name.nodes file is read at startup to tell an agent how to find the rest of the cluster or, in the case of the first node started, can be used to simplify authorization of subsequent nodes.

Add the addresses and ports of each node in the cluster to this file. One node will act as the membership coordinator; the list should include at least the membership coordinator's address:

1.2.3.4:7800
1.2.3.5:7800
1.2.3.6:7800

Please note that the Failover Manager agent will not verify the content of the efm.nodes file; the agent expects that some of the addresses in the file cannot be reached (e.g. that another agent hasn’t been started yet). For more information about the efm.nodes file, see Section 3.5.2.

Step 5: Configure the Other Nodes

Copy the efm.properties and efm.nodes files to the /etc/edb/efm-3.3 directory on the other nodes in your sample cluster. After copying the files, change the file ownership so the files are owned by efm:efm. The efm.properties file can be the same on every node, except for the following properties:

•	Modify the bind.address property to use the node’s local address.

•	Set is.witness to true if the node is a witness node. If the node is a witness node, the properties relating to a local database installation will be ignored.

Step 6: Start the EFM Cluster

On any node, start the Failover Manager agent. The agent is named efm-3.3; you can use your platform-specific service command to control the service. For example, on a CentOS or RHEL 7.x host use the command:

systemctl start efm-3.3

On a a CentOS or RHEL 6.x host use the command:

service efm-3.3 start

After the agent starts, run the following command to see the status of the single-node cluster. You should see the addresses of the other nodes in the Allowed node host list.

/usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/efm cluster-status efm

Start the agent on the other nodes. Run the efm cluster-status efm command on any node to see the cluster status.

If any agent fails to start, see the startup log for information about what went wrong:

cat /var/log/efm-3.3/startup-efm.log

Performing a Switchover

If the cluster status output shows that the master and standby(s) are in sync, you can perform a switchover with the following command:

/usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/efm promote efm -switchover

That command will promote a standby and reconfigure the master database as a new standby in the cluster. To switch back, run the command again.

For more information about using the efm command line tool, see Section 5.3.

3 Installing and Configuring Failover Manager

Before installing and configuring Failover Manager, you must create a Postgres streaming replication scenario, and ensure that the nodes have sufficient permissions to communicate with each other. You must also have credentials that allow access to the EnterpriseDB repository.

To request credentials for the repository, visit the EnterpriseDB Advanced Downloads page at:

https://www.enterprisedb.com/advanced-downloads

Follow the links in the EDB Failover Manager table to request credentials.

 

3.1 Installing an RPM Package on a RedHat, CentOS, or OEL Host

After receiving your credentials, you must create the EnterpriseDB repository configuration file on each node of the cluster, and then modify the file to enable access. The following steps provide detailed information about accessing the EnterpriseDB repository; the steps must be performed on each node of the cluster:

1.	Use the edb-repo package to create the repository configuration file. You can download and invoke the edb-repo file, or use rpm or yum to create the repository. Assume superuser privileges and use either rpm or yum to create the EnterpriseDB repository configuration file. :

rpm -Uvh http://yum.enterprisedb.com/edbrepos/edb-repo-latest.noarch.rpm

 

or

 

yum install -y http://yum.enterprisedb.com/edbrepos/edb-repo-latest.noarch.rpm

The repository configuration file is named edb.repo; it resides in /etc/yum.repos.d.

2.

Use your choice of editor to modify the repository configuration file, enabling the [enterprisedb-tools] and the [enterprisedb-dependencies] entries. To enable a repository, change the value of the enabled parameter to 1 and replace the user name and password placeholders in the baseurl specification with your user name and the repository password.

[enterprisedb-tools]

name=EnterpriseDB Tools $releasever - $basearch

baseurl=http://<username>:<password>@yum.enterprisedb.com/tools/redhat/rhel-$releasever-$basearch

enabled=0

gpgcheck=1

gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/ENTERPRISEDB-GPG-KEY

 

[enterprisedb-dependencies]

name=EnterpriseDB Dependencies $releasever - $basearch

baseurl=http://<username>:<password>@yum.enterprisedb.com/dependencies/redhat/rhel-$releasever-$basearch

enabled=0

gpgcheck=1

gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/ENTERPRISEDB-GPG-KEY

3.	After modifying applicable entries in the repository configuration file, save the configuration file and exit the editor.

Then, you can use the yum install command to install Failover Manager. For example, to install Failover Manager version 3.3, use the command:

yum install edb-efm33

When you install an RPM package that is signed by a source that is not recognized by your system, yum may ask for your permission to import the key to your local server. If prompted, and you are satisfied that the packages come from a trustworthy source, enter a y, and press Return to continue.

During the installation, yum may encounter a dependency that it cannot resolve. If it does, it will provide a list of the required dependencies that you must manually resolve.

Failover Manager must be installed by root. During the installation process, the installer will also create a user named efm that has sufficient privileges to invoke scripts that control the Failover Manager service for clusters owned by enterprisedb or postgres.

If you are using Failover Manager to monitor a cluster owned by a user other than enterprisedb or postgres, see Section 3.4, Extending Failover Manager Permissions.

After installing Failover Manager on each node of the cluster, you must:

1.	Modify the cluster properties file on each node. For detailed information about modifying the cluster properties file, see Section 3.5.1.

2.	Modify the cluster members file on each node. For more information about the cluster members file, see Section 3.5.2.

3.	If applicable, configure and test virtual IP address settings and any scripts that are identified in the cluster properties file.

4.	Start the Failover Manager agent on each node of the cluster. For more information about controlling the Failover Manager service, see Section 5.

 

3.1.1 Installation Locations

Failover Manager components are installed in the following locations:

Component	Location
Executables	/usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin
Libraries	/usr/edb/efm-3.3/lib
Cluster configuration files	/etc/edb/efm-3.3
Logs	/var/log/efm-3.3
Lock files	/var/lock/efm-3.3
Log rotation file	/etc/logrotate.d/efm-3.3
sudo configuration file	/etc/sudoers.d/efm-33
Binary to access VIP without sudo	/usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/secure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.2 Installing an RPM Package on a Debian or Ubuntu Host

To install Failover Manager, you must also have credentials that allow access to the EnterpriseDB repository. To request credentials for the repository, visit the EnterpriseDB Advanced Downloads page at:

https://www.enterprisedb.com/advanced-downloads

Follow the links in the EDB Failover Manager table to request credentials.

The following steps will walk you through using the EnterpriseDB apt repository to install Failover Manager. When using the commands, replace the username and password with the credentials provided by EnterpriseDB.

1.	Assume superuser privileges:

sudo su -

2.	Configure the EnterpriseDB apt repository:

sh -c 'echo "deb https://username:password@apt.enterprisedb.com/$(lsb_release -cs)-edb/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/edb-$(lsb_release -cs).list'

3.	Add support to your system for secure APT repositories:

apt-get install apt-transport-https

4.	Add the EDB signing key:

wget -q -O - https:// username: password @apt.enterprisedb.com/edb-deb.gpg.key | apt-key add -

5.	Update the repository meta data:

apt-get update

6.	Install Failover Manager:

apt-get install edb-efm33

 

3.3 Installing an RPM Package on a SLES Host

To install Failover Manager, you must also have credentials that allow access to the EnterpriseDB repository. To request credentials for the repository, visit the Advanced Downloads page at:

https://www.enterprisedb.com/advanced-downloads

You can use the zypper package manager to install a Failover Manager agent on an SLES 12 host. zypper will attempt to satisfy package dependencies as it installs a package, but requires access to specific repositories that are not hosted at EnterpriseDB.

You must assume superuser privileges and stop any firewalls before installing Failover Manager. Then, use the following commands to add EnterpriseDB repositories to your system:

zypper addrepo http://zypp.enterprisedb.com/suse/epas96-sles.repo
zypper addrepo http://zypp.enterprisedb.com/suse/epas-sles-tools.repo
zypper addrepo http://zypp.enterprisedb.com/suse/epas-sles-dependencies.repo

The commands create the repository configuration files in the /etc/zypp/repos.d directory. Then, use the following command to refresh the metadata on your SLES host to include the EnterpriseDB repository:

zypper refresh

When prompted, provide credentials for the repository, and specify a to always trust the provided key, and update the metadata to include the EnterpriseDB repository.

You must also add SUSEConnect and the SUSE Package Hub extension to the SLES host, and register the host with SUSE, allowing access to SUSE repositories. Use the commands:

zypper install SUSEConnect
SUSEConnect -r registration_number -e user_id
SUSEConnect -p PackageHub/12/x86_64
SUSEConnect -p sle-sdk/12/x86_64

Then, you can use the zypper utility to install a Failover Manager agent:

zypper install edb-efm33

For detailed information about registering a SUSE host, visit:

https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=7016626

3.4 Extending Failover Manager Permissions

During the Failover Manager installation, the installer creates a user named efm. efm does not have sufficient privileges to perform management functions that are normally limited to the database owner or operating system superuser.

•	When performing management functions requiring database superuser privileges, efm invokes the efm_db_functions script.

•	When performing management functions requiring operating system superuser privileges, efm invokes the efm_root_functions script.

•	When assigning or releasing a virtual IP address, efm invokes the efm_address script.

The efm_db_functions or efm_root_functions scripts perform management functions on behalf of the efm user.

The sudoers file contains entries that allow the user efm to control the Failover Manager service for clusters owned by postgres or enterprisedb. You can modify a copy of the sudoers file to grant permission to manage Postgres clusters owned by other users to efm.

The efm-33 file is located in /etc/sudoers.d, and contains the following entries:

# Copyright EnterpriseDB Corporation, 2014-2018. All Rights
# Reserved.
#
# Do not edit this file. Changes to the file may be overwritten
# during an upgrade.
#
# This file assumes you are running your efm cluster as user
# 'efm'. If not, then you will need to copy this file.

# Allow user 'efm' to sudo efm_db_functions as either 'postgres'
# or 'enterprisedb'. If you run your db service under a
# non-default account, you will need to copy this file to grant
# the proper permissions and specify the account in your efm
# cluster properties file by changing the 'db.service.owner'
# property.

efm ALL=(postgres) NOPASSWD: /usr/edb/efm-3.3 /bin/efm_db_functions
efm ALL=(enterprisedb) NOPASSWD: /usr/edb/efm-3.3 /bin/efm_db_functions

# Allow user 'efm' to sudo efm_root_functions as 'root' to
# write/delete the PID file, validate the db.service.owner
# property, etc.
efm ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/edb/efm-3.3 /bin/efm_root_functions
# Allow user 'efm' to sudo efm_address as root for VIP tasks.
efm ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/edb/efm-3.3 /bin/efm_address
# relax tty requirement for user 'efm'
Defaults:efm !requiretty

If you are using Failover Manager to monitor clusters that are owned by users other than postgres or enterprisedb, make a copy of the efm-33 file, and modify the content to allow the user to access the efm_functions script to manage their clusters.

If an agent cannot start because of permission problems, make sure the default /etc/sudoers file contains the following line at the end of the file:

## Read drop-in files from /etc/sudoers.d (the # here does not
# mean a comment)

#includedir /etc/sudoers.d

3.4.1 Running Failover Manager without sudo

By default, Failover Manager uses sudo to securely manage access to system functionality. If you choose to configure Failover Manager to run without sudo access, please note that root access is still required to:

•	install the Failover Manager RPM.

•	perform Failover Manager setup tasks.

To run Failover Manager without sudo, you must select a database process owner that will have privileges to perform management functions on behalf of Failover Manager. The user could be the default database superuser (for example, enterprisedb or postgres) or another privileged user. After selecting the user:

1.	Use the following command to add the user to the efm group:

usermod -a -G efm enterprisedb

This should allow the user to write to /var/run/efm-3.3 and /var/lock/efm-3.3.

2.	If you are reusing a cluster name, remove any previously created log files; the new user will not be able to write to log files created by the default (or other) owner.

3.	Copy the cluster properties template file and the nodes template file:

su - enterprisedb
cp /etc/edb/efm-3.3/efm.properties.in directory/cluster_name.properties
cp /etc/edb/efm-3.3/efm.nodes.in directory/cluster_name.nodes

Then, modify the cluster properties file, providing the name of the user in the db.service.owner property. You must also ensure that the db.service.name property is blank; without sudo, you cannot run services without root access.

After modifying the configuration, the new user can control Failover Manager with the following command:

/usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/runefm.sh start|stop directory/cluster_name.properties

Where directory/cluster_name.properties specifies the full path and name of the cluster properties file. Please note that the user must ensure that the full path to the properties file must be provided whenever the non-default user is controlling agents or using the efm script.

To allow the new user to manage Failover Manager as a service, you must provide a custom script or unit file.

Failover Manager uses a binary named manage-vip that resides in /usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/secure/ to perform VIP management operations without sudo privileges. This script uses setuid to acquire with the privileges needed to manage Virtual IP addresses.

•	This directory is only accessible to root and users in the efm group.

•	The binary is only executable by root and the efm group.

For security reasons, we recommend against modifying the access privileges of the /usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/secure/ directory or the manage-vip script.

For more information about using Failover Manager without sudo, visit:

https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/running-edb-postgres-failover-manager-without-sudo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.5 Configuring Failover Manager

Configurable Failover Manager properties are specified in two user-modifiable files:

•	efm.properties

•

efm.nodes

The efm.properties file contains the properties of the individual node on which it resides, while the efm.nodes file contains a list of the current Failover Manager cluster members. By default, the installer places the files in the /etc/edb/efm-3.3 directory.

Please note that all user scripts referenced in the properties file will be invoked as the Failover Manager user.

3.5.1 The Cluster Properties File

The Failover Manager installer creates a file template for the cluster properties file named efm.properties.in in the /etc/edb/efm-3.3 directory. After completing the Failover Manager installation, you must make a working copy of the template before modifying the file contents. For example, the following command copies the efm.properties.in file, creating a properties file named efm.properties:

# cp /etc/edb/efm-3.3/efm.properties.in /etc/edb/efm-3.3 /efm.properties

After copying the template file, change the owner of the file to efm:

# chown efm:efm efm.properties

Please note: By default, Failover Manager expects the cluster properties file to be named efm.properties. If you name the properties file something other than efm.properties, you must modify the service script or unit file to instruct Failover Manager to use a different name.

After creating the cluster properties file, add (or modify) configuration parameter values as required. For detailed information about each property, see Section 3.5.1.1.

The property files are owned by root. The Failover Manager service script expects to find the files in the /etc/edb/efm-3.3 directory. If you move the property file to another location, you must create a symbolic link that specifies the new location.

3.5.1.1 Specifying Cluster Properties

You can use the properties listed in the cluster properties file to specify connection properties and behaviors for your Failover Manager cluster. Modifications to property settings will be applied when Failover Manager starts. If you modify a property value you must restart Failover Manager to apply the changes.

Property values are case-sensitive. Note that while Postgres uses quoted strings in parameter values, Failover Manager does not allow quoted strings in property values. For example, while you might specify an IP address in a Postgres configuration parameter as:

listen_addresses='192.168.2.47'

Failover Manager requires that the value not be enclosed in quotes:

bind.address=192.168.2.54:7800

Use the properties in the efm.properties file to specify connection, administrative, and operational details for Failover Manager.

Use the following properties to specify connection details for the Failover Manager cluster:

# The value for the password property should be the output from
# 'efm encrypt' -- do not include a cleartext password here. To
# prevent accidental sharing of passwords among clusters, the
# cluster name is incorporated into the encrypted password. If
# you change the cluster name (the name of this file), you must
# encrypt the password again with the new name.
# The db.port property must be the same for all nodes.

db.user=

db.password.encrypted=

db.port=

db.database=

The db.user specified must have sufficient privileges to invoke selected PostgreSQL commands on behalf of Failover Manager. For more information, please see Section 2.2.

For information about encrypting the password for the database user, see Section 3.5.1.2.

Use the db.service.owner property to specify the name of the operating system user that owns the cluster that is being managed by Failover Manager. This property is not required on a dedicated witness node.

# This property tells EFM which OS user owns the $PGDATA dir for
# the 'db.database'. By default, the owner is either 'postgres'
# for PostgreSQL or 'enterprisedb' for EDB Postgres Advanced
# Server. However, if you have configured your db to run as a
# different user, you will need to copy the /etc/sudoers.d/efm-XX
# conf file to grant the necessary permissions to your db owner.
#
# This username must have write permission to the
# 'db.recovery.conf.dir' specified below.

db.service.owner=

Specify the name of the database service in the db.service.name property if you use the service or systemctl command when starting or stopping the service.

# Specify the proper service name in order to use service
# commands rather than pg_ctl to start/stop/restart a database.
# For example, if this property is set, then 'service <name>
# restart' or 'systemctl restart <name>' (depending on OS
# version) will be used to restart the database rather than
# pg_ctl. This property is required unless db.bin is set.

db.service.name=

You should use the same service control mechanism (pg_ctl, service, or systemctl) each time you start or stop the database service. If you use the pg_ctl program to control the service, specify the location of the pg_ctl program in the db.bin property.

# Specify the directory containing the pg_ctl command, for
# example: /usr/pgsql-9.6/bin. Unless the db.service.name
# property is used, the pg_ctl command is used to
# start/stop/restart databases as needed after a failover or
# switchover. This property is required unless db.service.name
# is set.

db.bin=

Use the db.recovery.conf.dir property to specify the location to which a recovery file will be written on the Master node of the cluster, and a trigger file is written on a Standby. This property is not required on a dedicated witness node.

# Specify the location of the db recovery.conf file on the node.
# On a standby node, the trigger file location is read from the
# file in this directory. After a failover, the recovery.conf
# files on remaining standbys are changed to point to the new
# master db (a copy of the original is made first). On a master
# node, a recovery.conf file will be written during failover and
# promotion to ensure that the master node can not be restarted
# as the master database.

db.recovery.conf.dir=

Use the jdbc.sslmode property to instruct Failover Manager to use SSL connections; by default, SSL is disabled.

# Use the jdbc.sslmode property to enable ssl for EFM
# connections. Setting this property to anything but 'disable'
# will force the agents to use 'ssl=true' for all JDBC database
# connections (to both local and remote databases).
# Valid values are:
#
# disable - Do not use ssl for connections.
# verify-ca - EFM will perform CA verification before allowing
# the certificate.
# require - Verification will not be performed on the server
# certificate.

jdbc.sslmode=disable

For information about configuring and using SSL, please see:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/ssl-tcp.html

and

https://jdbc.postgresql.org/documentation/94/ssl.html

Use the user.email property to specify an email address (or multiple email addresses) that will receive any notifications sent by Failover Manager.

# Email address(es) for notifications. The value of this
# property must be the same across all agents. Multiple email
# addresses must be separated by space. If using a notification
# script instead, this property can be left blank.

user.email=

Use the notification.level property to specify the minimum severity level at which Failover Manager will send user notifications or when a notification script is called. For a complete list of notifications, please see Section 7.

# Minimum severity level of notifications that will be sent by
# the agent. The minimum level also applies to the notification
# script (below). Valid values are INFO, WARNING, and SEVERE.
# A list of notifications is grouped by severity in the user's
# guide.

notification.level=INFO

Use the script.notification property to specify the path to a user-supplied script that acts as a notification service; the script will be passed a message subject and a message body. The script will be invoked each time Failover Manager generates a user notification.

# Absolute path to script run for user notifications.
#
# This is an optional user-supplied script that can be used for
# notifications instead of email. This is required if not using
# email notifications. Either/both can be used. The script will
# be passed two parameters: the message subject and the message
# body.

script.notification=

The bind.address property specifies the IP address and port number of the agent on the current node of the Failover Manager cluster.

# This property specifies the ip address and port that jgroups
# will bind to on this node. The value is of the form
# <ip>:<port>.
# Note that the port specified here is used for communicating
# with other nodes, and is not the same as the admin.port below,
# used only to communicate with the local agent to send control
# signals.
# For example, <provide_your_ip_address_here>:7800

bind.address=

Use the admin.port property to specify a port on which Failover Manager listens for administrative commands.

# This property controls the port binding of the administration
# server which is used for some commands (ie cluster-status). The
# default is 7809; you can modify this value if the port is
# already in use.

admin.port=7809

Set the is.witness property to true to indicate that the current node is a witness node. If is.witness is true, the local agent will not check to see if a local database is running.

# Specifies whether or not this is a witness node. Witness nodes
# do not have local databases running.

is.witness=

The Postgres pg_is_in_recovery() function is a boolean function that reports the recovery state of a database. The function returns true if the database is in recovery, or false if the database is not in recovery. When an agent starts, it connects to the local database and invokes the pg_is_in_recovery() function. If the server responds true, the agent assumes the role of standby; if the server responds false, the agent assumes the role of master. If there is no local database, the agent will assume an idle state.

If is.witness is true, Failover Manager will not check the recovery state.

The local.period property specifies how many seconds between attempts to contact the database server.
The local.timeout property specifies how long an agent will wait for a positive response from the local database server.
The local.timeout.final property specifies how long an agent will wait after the final attempt to contact the database server on the current node. If a response is not received from the database within the number of seconds specified by the local.timeout.final property, the database is assumed to have failed.

For example, given the default values of these properties, a check of the local database happens once every 10 seconds. If an attempt to contact the local database does not come back positive within 60 seconds, Failover Manager makes a final attempt to contact the database. If a response is not received within 10 seconds, Failover Manager declares database failure and notifies the administrator listed in the user.email property. These properties are not required on a dedicated witness node.

# These properties apply to the connection(s) EFM uses to monitor
# the local database. Every 'local.period' seconds, a database
# check is made in a background thread. If the main monitoring
# thread does not see that any checks were successful in
# 'local.timeout' seconds, then the main thread makes a final
# check with a timeout value specified by the
# 'local.timeout.final' value. All values are in seconds.
# Whether EFM uses single or multiple connections for database
# checks is controlled by the 'db.reuse.connection.count'
# property.

local.period=10
local.timeout=60
local.timeout.final=10

If necessary, you should modify these values to suit your business model.

Use the remote.timeout property to specify how many seconds an agent waits for a response from a remote database server (i.e., how long a standby agent waits to verify that the master database is actually down before performing failover).

# Timeout for a call to check if a remote database is responsive.
# For example, this is how long a standby would wait for a
# DB ping request from itself and the witness to the master DB
# before performing failover.

remote.timeout=10

Use the node.timeout property to specify the number of seconds that an agent will wait for a response from a node when determining if a node has failed. The node.timeout property value specifies a timeout value for agent-to-agent communication; other timeout properties in the cluster properties file specify values for agent-to-database communication.

# The total amount of time in seconds to wait before determining
# that a node has failed or been disconnected from this node.
#
# The value of this property must be the same across all agents.

node.timeout=50

Use the stop.isolated.master property to instruct Failover Manager to shut down the database if a master agent detects that it is isolated. When true (the default), Failover Manager will stop the database before invoking the script specified in the script. master.isolated property.

# Shut down the database after a master agent detects that it has
# been isolated from the majority of the efm cluster. If set to
# true, efm will stop the database before running the
# 'script.master.isolated' script, if a script is specified.

stop.isolated.master=true

Use the stop.failed.master property to instruct Failover Manager to attempt to shut down a master database if it can not reach the database. If true, Failover Manager will run the script specified in the script.db.failure property after attempting to shut down the database.

# Attempt to shut down a failed master database after EFM can no
# longer connect to it. This can be used for added safety in the
# case a failover is caused by a failure of the network on the
# master node.
# If specified, a 'script.db.failure' script is run after this attempt.

stop.failed.master=true

Use the pingServer property to specify the IP address of a server that Failover Manager can use to confirm that network connectivity is not a problem.

# This is the address of a well-known server that EFM can ping
# in an effort to determine network reachability issues. It
# might be the IP address of a nameserver within your corporate
# firewall or another server that *should* always be reachable
# via a 'ping' command from each of the EFM nodes.
#
# There are many reasons why this node might not be considered
# reachable: firewalls might be blocking the request, ICMP might
# be filtered out, etc.
#
# Do not use the IP address of any node in the EFM cluster
# (master, standby, or witness because this ping server is meant
# to provide an additional layer of information should the EFM
# nodes lose sight of each other.
#
# The installation default is Google's DNS server.

pingServerIp=8.8.8.8

Use the pingServerCommand property to specify the command used to test network connectivity.

# This command will be used to test the reachability of certain
# nodes.
#
# Do not include an IP address or hostname on the end of
# this command - it will be added dynamically at runtime with the
# values contained in 'virtualIp' and 'pingServer'.
#
# Make sure this command returns reasonably quickly - test it
# from a shell command line first to make sure it works properly.

pingServerCommand=/bin/ping -q -c3 -w5

Use the auto.allow.hosts property to instruct the server to use the addresses specified in the .nodes file of the first node started to update the allowed host list. Enabling this property (setting auto.allow.hosts to true) can simplify cluster start-up.

# Have the first node started automatically add the addresses
# from its .nodes file to the allowed host list. This will make
# it faster to start the cluster when the initial set of hosts
# is already known.

auto.allow.hosts=false

Use the stable.nodes.file property to instruct the server to not rewrite the nodes file when a node joins or leaves the cluster. This property is most useful in clusters with unchanging IP addresses.

# When set to true, EFM will not rewrite the .nodes file whenever
# new nodes join or leave the cluster. This can help starting a
# cluster in the cases where it is expected for member addresses
# to be mostly static, and combined with 'auto.allow.hosts' makes
# startup easier when learning failover manager.

stable.nodes.file=false

The db.reuse.connection.count property allows the administrator to specify the number of times Failover Manager reuses the same database connection to check the database health. The default value is 0, indicating that Failover Manager will create a fresh connection each time. This property is not required on a dedicated witness node.

# This property controls how many times a database connection is
# reused before creating a new one. If set to zero, a new
# connection will be created every time an agent pings its local
# database.

db.reuse.connection.count=0

The auto.failover property enables automatic failover. By default, auto.failover is set to true.

# Whether or not failover will happen automatically when the master
# fails. Set to false if you want to receive the failover notifications
# but not have EFM actually perform the failover steps.
# The value of this property must be the same across all agents.

auto.failover=true

Use the auto.reconfigure property to instruct Failover Manager to enable or disable automatic reconfiguration of remaining Standby servers after the primary standby is promoted to Master. Set the property to true to enable automatic reconfiguration (the default) or false to disable automatic reconfiguration. This property is not required on a dedicated witness node.

# After a standby is promoted, failover manager will attempt to
# update the remaining standbys to use the new master. Failover
# manager will back up recovery.conf, change the host parameter

# of the primary_conninfo entry, and restart the database. The

# restart command is contained in either the efm_db_functions or

# efm_root_functions file; default when not running db as an os

# service is:
# "pg_ctl restart -m fast -w -t <timeout> -D <directory>"

# where the timeout is the local.timeout property value and the

# directory is specified by db.recovery.conf.dir. To turn off

# automatic reconfiguration, set this property to false.

auto.reconfigure=true

Please note: primary_conninfo is a space-delimited list of keyword=value pairs.

Please note: If you are using replication slots to manage your WAL segments, automatic reconfiguration is not supported; you should set auto.reconfigure to false. For more information, see Section 2.2.

Use the promotable property to indicate that a node should not be promoted. To override the setting, use the efm set-priority command at runtime; for more information about the efm set-priority command, see Section 5.3.

# A standby with this set to false will not be added to the
# failover priority list, and so will not be available for
# promotion. The property will be used whenever an agent starts
# as a standby or resumes as a standby after being idle. After
# startup/resume, the node can still be added or removed from the
# priority list with the 'efm set-priority' command. This
# property is required for all non-witness nodes.

promotable=true

Use the minimum.standbys property to specify the minimum number of standby nodes that will be retained on a cluster; if the standby count drops to the specified minimum, a replica node will not be promoted in the event of a failure of the master node.

# Instead of setting specific standbys as being unavailable for
# promotion, this property can be used to set a minimum number
# of standbys that will not be promoted. Set to one, for
# example, promotion will not happen if it will drop the number
# of standbys below this value. This property must be the same on
# each node.

minimum.standbys=0

Use the recovery.check.period property to specify the number of seconds that Failover Manager will wait before checks to see if a database is out of recovery.

# Time in seconds between checks to see if a promoting database
# is out of recovery.

recovery.check.period=2

Use the auto.resume.period property to specify the number of seconds (after a monitored database fails, and an agent has assumed an idle state, or when starting in IDLE mode) during which an agent will attempt to resume monitoring that database.

# Period in seconds for IDLE agents to try to resume monitoring
# after a database failure or when starting in IDLE mode. Set to
# 0 for agents to not try to resume (in which case the
# 'efm resume <cluster>' command is used after bringing a
# database back up).

auto.resume.period=0

Failover Manager provides support for clusters that use a virtual IP. If your cluster uses a virtual IP, provide the host name or IP address in the virtualIp property; specify the corresponding prefix in the virtualIp.prefix property. If virtualIp is left blank, virtual IP support is disabled.

Use the virtualIp.interface property to provide the network interface used by the VIP.

The specified virtual IP address is assigned only to the master node of the cluster. If you specify virtualIp.single=true, the same VIP address will be used on the new master in the event of a failover. Specify a value of false to provide a unique IP address for each node of the cluster.

For information about using a virtual IP address, see Section 3.6.

# These properties specify the IP and prefix length that will be
# remapped during failover. If you do not use a VIP as part of
# your failover solution, leave the virtualIp property blank to
# disable Failover Manager support for VIP processing (assigning,
# releasing, testing reachability, etc).
#
# If you specify a VIP, the interface and prefix are required.
#
# If specify a host name, it will be resolved to an IP address
# when acquiring or releasing the VIP. If the host name resolves
# to more than one IP address, there is no way to predict which
# address Failover Manager will use.
#
# By default, the virtualIp and virtualIp.prefix values must be
# the same across all agents. If you set virtualIp.single to
# false, you can specify unique values for virtualIp and
# virtualIp.prefix on each node.
#
# If you are using an IPv4 address, the virtualIp.interface value
# should not contain a secondary virtual ip id (do not include
# ":1", etc).

virtualIp=
virtualIp.interface=
virtualIp.prefix=
virtualIp.single=true

Provide paths to scripts that reconfigure your load balancer in the event of a switchover or master failure scenario. These scripts will also be invoked in the event of a standby failure.

If you are using these properties, they should be provided on every node of the cluster (master, standby, and witness). This ensures that if a database node fails, another node will call the detach script with the failed node's address.

Set the check.vip.before.promotion property to false to indicate that Failover Manager will not check to see if a VIP is in use before assigning it to a a new master in the event of a failure. Please note that this could result in multiple nodes broadcasting on the same VIP address; unless the master node is isolated or can be shut down via another process, you should set this property to true.

# Whether to check if the VIP (when used) is still in use before
# promoting after a master failure. Turning this off may allow
# the new master to have the VIP even though another node is also
# broadcasting it. This should only be used in environments where
# it is known that the failed master node will be isolated or
# shut down through other means.

check.vip.before.promotion=true

Provide a script name after the script.load.balancer.attach property to identify a script that will be invoked when a node should be attached to the load balancer. Use the script.load.balancer.detach property to specify the name of a script that will be invoked when a node should be detached from the load balancer. Include the %h placeholder to represent the IP address of the node that is being attached or removed from the cluster.

# Absolute path to load balancer scripts
# The attach script is called when a node should be attached to
# the load balancer, for example after a promotion. The detach
# script is called when a node should be removed, for example
# when a database has failed or is about to be stopped. Use %h to
# represent the IP/hostname of the node that is being
# attached/detached.
#
# Example:
# script.load.balancer.attach=/somepath/attachscript %h

script.load.balancer.attach=
script.load.balancer.detach=

script.fence specifies the path to an optional user-supplied script that will be invoked during the promotion of a standby node to master node.

# absolute path to fencing script run during promotion
#
# This is an optional user-supplied script that will be run
# during failover on the standby database node. If left blank,
# no action will be taken. If specified, EFM will execute this
# script before promoting the standby.
#
# Parameters can be passed into this script for the failed master
# and new primary node addresses. Use %p for new primary and %f
# for failed master. On a node that has just been promoted, %p
# should be the same as the node's efm binding address.
#
# Example:
# script.fence=/somepath/myscript %p %f
#
# NOTE: FAILOVER WILL NOT OCCUR IF THIS SCRIPT RETURNS A NON-ZERO EXIT CODE.

script.fence=

Use the script.post.promotion property to specify the path to an optional user-supplied script that will be invoked after a standby node has been promoted to master.

# Absolute path to fencing script run after promotion
#
# This is an optional user-supplied script that will be run after
# failover on the standby node after it has been promoted and
# is no longer in recovery. The exit code from this script has
# no effect on failover manager, but will be included in a
# notification sent after the script executes.
#
# Parameters can be passed into this script for the failed master
# and new primary node addresses. Use %p for new primary and %f
# for failed master. On a node that has just been promoted, %p
# should be the same as the node's efm binding address.
#
# Example:
# script.post.promotion=/somepath/myscript %f %p

script.post.promotion=

Use the script.resumed property to specify an optional path to a user-supplied script that will be invoked when an agent resumes monitoring of a database.

# Absolute path to resume script
#
# This script is run before an IDLE agent resumes
# monitoring its local database.

script.resumed=

Use the script.db.failure property to specify the complete path to an optional user-supplied script that Failover Manager will invoke if an agent detects that the database that it monitors has failed.

# Absolute path to script run after database failure

#

# This is an optional user-supplied script that will be run after

# an agent detects that its local database has failed.

script.db.failure=

Use the script.master.isolated property to specify the complete path to an optional user-supplied script that Failover Manager will invoke if the agent monitoring the master database detects that the master is isolated from the majority of the Failover Manager cluster. This script is called immediately after the VIP is released (if a VIP is in use).

# Absolute path to script run on isolated master

#

# This is an optional user-supplied script that will be run after

# a master agent detects that it has been isolated from the
# majority of the efm cluster.

script.master.isolated=

Use the script.remote.pre.promotion property to specify the path and name of a script that will be invoked on any agent nodes not involved in the promotion when a node is about to promote its database to master.

Include the %p placeholder to identify the address of the new primary node.

# Absolute path to script invoked on non-promoting agent nodes
# before a promotion.
#
# This optional user-supplied script will be invoked on other
# agents when a node is about to promote its database. The exit
# code from this script has no effect on Failover Manager, but
# will be included in a notification sent after the script
# executes.
#
# Pass a parameter (%p) with the script to identify the new
# primary node address.
#
# Example:
# script.remote.pre.promotion=/path_name/script_name %p

script.remote.pre.promotion=

Use the script.remote.post.promotion property to specify the path and name of a script that will be invoked on any non-master nodes after a promotion occurs.

Include the %p placeholder to identify the address of the new primary node.

# Absolute path to script invoked on non-master agent nodes
# after a promotion.
#
# This optional user-supplied script will be invoked on nodes
# (except the new master) after a promotion occurs. The exit code
# from this script has no effect on Failover Manager, but will be
# included in a notification sent after the script executes.
#
# Pass a parameter (%p) with the script to identify the new
# primary node address.
#
# Example:
# script.remote.post.promotion=/path_name/script_name %p

script.remote.post.promotion=

Use the script.custom.monitor property to provide the name and location of an optional script that will be invoked on regular intervals (specified in seconds by the custom.monitor.interval property).

Use custom.monitor.timeout to specify the maximum time that the script will be allowed to run; if script execution does not complete within the time specified, Failover Manager will send a notification.

Set custom.monitor.safe.mode to true to instruct Failover Manager to report non-zero exit codes from the script, but not promote a standby as a result of an exit code.

# Absolute path to a custom monitoring script.
#
# Use script.custom.monitor to specify the location and name of
# an optional user-supplied script that will be invoked
# periodically to perform custom monitoring tasks. A non-zero
# exit value means that a check has failed; this will be treated
# as a database failure. On a master node, script failure will
# cause a promotion. On a standby node script failure will
# generate a notification and the agent will become IDLE.
#
# The custom.monitor.* properties are required if a custom
# monitoring script is specified:
#
# custom.monitor.interval is the time in seconds between executions of the script.
#
# custom.monitor.timeout is a timeout value in seconds for how
# long the script will be allowed to run. If script execution
# exceeds the specified time, the task will be stopped and a
# notification sent. Subsequent runs will continue.
#
# If custom.monitor.safe.mode is set to true, non-zero exit codes
# from the script will be reported but will not cause a promotion
# or be treated as a database failure. This allows testing of the
# script without affecting EFM.
#
script.custom.monitor=
custom.monitor.interval=
custom.monitor.timeout=
custom.monitor.safe.mode=

Use the sudo.command property to specify a command that will be invoked by Failover Manager when performing tasks that require extended permissions. Use this option to include command options that might be specific to your system authentication.

Use the sudo.user.command property to specify a command that will be invoked by Failover Manager when executing commands that will be performed by the database owner.

# Command to use in place of 'sudo' if desired when efm runs
# the efm_db_functions or efm_root_functions, or efm_address
# scripts.
# Sudo is used in the following ways by efm:
#
# sudo /usr/edb/efm-<version>/bin/efm_address <arguments>
# sudo /usr/edb/efm-<version>/bin/efm_root_functions <arguments>
# sudo -u <db service owner>
/usr/edb/efm-<version>/bin/efm_db_functions <arguments>
#
# 'sudo' in the first two examples will be replaced by the value
# of the sudo.command property. 'sudo -u <db service owner>' will
# be replaced by the value of the sudo.user.command property.
# The '%u' field will be replaced with the db owner.

sudo.command=sudo
sudo.user.command=sudo -u %u

Use the lock.dir property to specify an alternate location for the Failover Manager lock file; the file prevents Failover Manager from starting multiple (potentially orphaned) agents for a single cluster on the node.

# Specify the directory of lock file on the node. Failover
# Manager creates a file named <cluster>.lock at this location to
# avoid starting multiple agents for same cluster. If the path
# does not exist, Failover Manager will attempt to create it. If
# not specified defaults to '/var/lock/efm-<version>'

lock.dir=

Use the log.dir property to specify the location to which agent log files will be written; Failover Manager will attempt to create the directory if the directory does not exist.

# Specify the directory of agent logs on the node. If the path
# does not exist, Failover Manager will attempt to create it. If
# not specified defaults to '/var/log/efm-<version>'. (To store
# Failover Manager startup logs in a custom location, modify the
# path in the service script to point to an existing, writable
# directory.)
# If using a custom log directory, you must configure
# logrotate separately. Use 'man logrotate' for more information.

log.dir=

After enabling the UDP or TCP protocol on a Failover Manager host, you can enable logging to syslog. Use the syslog.protocol parameter to specify the protocol type (UDP or TCP) and the syslog.port parameter to specify the listener port of the syslog host. The syslog.facility value may be used as an identifier for the process that created the entry; the value must be between LOCAL0 and LOCAL7.

# Syslog information. The syslog service must be listening on
# the port for the given protocol, which can be UDP or TCP.
# The facilities supported are LOCAL0 through LOCAL7.
syslog.host=localhost
syslog.port=514
syslog.protocol=UDP
syslog.facility=LOCAL1

Use the file.log.enabled and syslog.enabled properties to specify the type of logging that you wish to implement. Set file.log.enabled to true to enable logging to a file; enable the UDP protocol or TCP protocol and set syslog.enabled to true to enable logging to syslog. You can enable logging to both a file and syslog.

# Which logging is enabled.
file.log.enabled=true
syslog.enabled=false

For more information about configuring syslog logging, see Section 6.1.

Use the jgroups.loglevel and efm.loglevel parameters to specify the level of detail logged by Failover Manager. The default value is INFO. For more information about logging, see Section 6, Controlling Logging.

# Logging levels for JGroups and EFM.
# Valid values are: TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR
# Default value: INFO
# It is not necessary to increase these values unless debugging a
# specific issue. If nodes are not discovering each other at
# startup, increasing the jgroups level to DEBUG will show
# information about the TCP connection attempts that may help
# diagnose the connection failures.

jgroups.loglevel=INFO
efm.loglevel=INFO

Use the jvm.options property to pass JVM-related configuration information. The default setting specifies the amount of memory that the Failover Manager agent will be allowed to use.

# Extra information that will be passed to the JVM when starting
# the agent.

jvm.options=-Xmx128m

 

3.5.1.2 Encrypting Your Database Password

Failover Manager requires you to encrypt your database password before including it in the cluster properties file. Use the efm utility (located in the /usr/edb/efm-3.3 /bin directory) to encrypt the password. When encrypting a password, you can either pass the password on the command line when you invoke the utility, or use the EFMPASS environment variable.

To encrypt a password, use the command:

# efm encrypt cluster_name [ --from-env ]

Where cluster_name specifies the name of the Failover Manager cluster.

If you include the --from-env option, you must export the value you wish to encrypt before invoking the encryption utility. For example:

export EFMPASS=password

If you do not include the --from-env option, Failover Manager will prompt you to enter the database password twice before generating an encrypted password for you to place in your cluster property file. When the utility shares the encrypted password, copy and paste the encrypted password into the cluster property files.

Please note: Many Java vendors ship their version of Java with full-strength encryption included, but not enabled due to export restrictions. If you encounter an error that refers to an illegal key size when attempting to encrypt the database password, you should download and enable a Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) that provides an unlimited policy for your platform.

The following example demonstrates using the encrypt utility to encrypt a password for the acctg cluster:

# efm encrypt acctg
This utility will generate an encrypted password for you to place in your EFM cluster property file:
/etc/edb/efm-3.3/acctg.properties

Please enter the password and hit enter:
Please enter the password again to confirm:
The encrypted password is: 516b36fb8031da17cfbc010f7d09359c

Please paste this into your acctg.properties file
db.password.encrypted=516b36fb8031da17cfbc010f7d09359c

Please note: the utility will notify you if a properties file does not exist.

After receiving your encrypted password, paste the password into the properties file and start the Failover Manager service. If there is a problem with the encrypted password, the Failover Manager service will not start:

[witness@localhost ~]# service efm-3.3 start
Starting local efm-3.3 service: [FAILED]

If you receive this message when starting the Failover Manager service, please see the startup log (located in /var/log/efm-3.3/startup-efm.log) for more information.

If you are using RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x, startup information is also available with the following command:

systemctl status efm-3.3

To prevent a cluster from inadvertently connecting to the database of another cluster, the cluster name is incorporated into the encrypted password. If you modify the cluster name, you will need to re-encrypt the database password and update the cluster properties file.

Using the EFMPASS Environment Variable

The following example demonstrates using the --from-env environment variable when encrypting a password. Before invoking the efm encrypt command, set the value of EFMPASS to the password (1safepassword):

# export EFMPASS=1safepassword

Then, invoke efm encrypt, specifying the --from-env option:

# efm encrypt acctg --from-env
# 7ceecd8965fa7a5c330eaa9e43696f83

The encrypted password (7ceecd8965fa7a5c330eaa9e43696f83) is returned as a text value; when using a script, you can check the exit code of the command to confirm that the command succeeded. A successful execution returns 0.

 

3.5.2 The Cluster Members File

Each node in a Failover Manager cluster has a cluster members file. When an agent starts, it uses the file to locate other cluster members. The Failover Manager installer creates a file template for the cluster members file named efm.nodes.in in the /etc/edb/efm-3.3 directory. After completing the Failover Manager installation, you must make a working copy of the template:

# cp /etc/edb/efm-3.3/efm.nodes.in /etc/edb/efm-3.3/efm.nodes

After copying the template file, change the owner of the file to efm:

chown efm:efm efm.nodes

By default, Failover Manager expects the cluster members file to be named efm.nodes. If you name the cluster members file something other than efm.nodes, you must modify the Failover Manager service script to instruct Failover Manager to use the new name.

The cluster members file on the first node started can be empty; this node will become the Membership Coordinator. On each subsequent node, the cluster member file must contain the address and port number of the Membership Coordinator. Each entry in the cluster members file must be listed in an address:port format, with multiple entries separated by white space.

The Membership Coordinator will update the contents of the efm.nodes file to match the current members of the cluster. As agents join or leave the cluster, the efm.nodes files on other agents are updated to reflect the current cluster membership. If you invoke the efm stop-cluster command, Failover Manager does not modify the file.

If the Membership Coordinator leaves the cluster, another node will assume the role. You can use the efm cluster-status command to find the address of the Membership Coordinator. If a node joins or leaves a cluster while an agent is down, you must manually ensure that the file includes at least the current Membership Coordinator.

If you know the IP addresses and ports of the nodes that will be joining the cluster, you can include the addresses in the cluster members file at any time. At startup, any addresses that do not identify cluster members will be ignored unless the auto.allow.hosts property (in the cluster properties file) is set to true. For more information, see Section 4.1.2.

If the stable.nodes.file property is set to true, the Membership Coordinator will not update the .nodes file when cluster members join or leave the cluster; this behavior is most useful when the IP addresses of cluster members do not change often. For information about modifying cluster properties, see Section 3.5.1.1.

3.6 Using Failover Manager with Virtual IP Addresses

Failover Manager uses the efm_address script to assign or release a virtual IP address. By default, the script resides in:

/usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/efm_address

Use the following command variations to assign or release an IPv4 or IPv6 IP address.

To assign a virtual IPv4 IP address:

# efm_address add4 interface_name IPv4_addr/prefix

To assign a virtual IPv6 IP address:

# efm_address add6 interface_name IPv6_addr/prefix

To release a virtual address:

# efm_address del interface_name IP_address/prefix

Where:

interface_name matches the name specified in the virtualIp.interface property in the cluster properties file.

IPv4_addr or IPv6_addr matches the name specified in the virtualIp property in the cluster properties file.

prefix matches the value specified in the virtualIp.prefix property in the cluster properties file.

For more information about properties that describe a virtual IP address, see Section 3.5.1.1.

You must invoke the efm_address script as the root user. The efm user is created during the installation, and is granted privileges in the sudoers file to run the efm_address script. For more information about the sudoers file, see Section 3.4, Extending Failover Manager Permissions.

When using a virtual IP (VIP) address with Failover Manager, it is important to test the VIP functionality manually before starting failover manager. This will catch any network-related issues before they cause a problem during an actual failover. The following steps test the actions that failover manager will take. The example uses the following property values:

virtualIp=172.24.38.239
virtualIp.interface=eth0
virtualIp.prefix=24
pingServerCommand=/bin/ping -q -c3 -w5

Please note: the virtualIp.prefix specifies the number of significant bits in the virtual Ip address.

When instructed to ping the VIP from a node, use the command defined by the pingServerCommand property.

1. Ping the VIP from all nodes to confirm that the address is not already in use:

# /bin/ping -q -c3 -w5 172.24.38.239
PING 172.24.38.239 (172.24.38.239) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- 172.24.38.239 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors, 100% packet loss, time 3000ms

You should see 100% packet loss.

2. Run the efm_address add4 command on the Master node to assign the VIP and then confirm with ip address:

# efm_address add4 eth0 172.24.38.239/24
# ip address
<output truncated>
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 36:AA:A4:F4:1C:40
inet addr:172.24.38.239 Bcast:172.24.38.255
...

3. Ping the VIP from the other nodes to verify that they can reach the VIP:

# /bin/ping -q -c3 -w5 172.24.38.239
PING 172.24.38.239 (172.24.38.239) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- 172.24.38.239 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.023/0.025/0.029/0.006 ms

You should see no packet loss.

4. Use the efm_address del command to release the address on the master node and confirm the node has been released with ip address:

# efm_address del eth0 172.24.38.239/24
# ip address
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 22:00:0A:89:02:8E

inet addr:10.137.2.142 Bcast:10.137.2.191
...

The output from this step should not show an eth0 interface

5. Repeat step 3, this time verifying that the Standby and Witness do not see the VIP in use:

# /bin/ping -q -c3 -w5 172.24.38.239
PING 172.24.38.239 (172.24.38.239) 56(84) bytes of data.
--- 172.24.38.239 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors, 100% packet loss, time 3000ms

You should see 100% packet loss. Repeat this step on all nodes.

6. Repeat step 2 on all Standby nodes to assign the VIP to every node. You can ping the VIP from any node to verify that it is in use.

# efm_address add4 eth0 172.24.38.239/24
# ip address
<output truncated>
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 36:AA:A4:F4:1C:40
inet addr:172.24.38.239 Bcast:172.24.38.255
...

After the test steps above, release the VIP from any non-Master node before attempting to start Failover Manager.

4 Using Failover Manager

Failover Manager offers support for monitoring and failover of clusters with one or more Standby servers. You can add or remove nodes from the cluster as your demand for resources grows or shrinks.

If a Master node reboots, Failover Manager may detect the database is down on the Master node and promote a Standby node to the role of Master. If this happens, the Failover Manager agent on the (rebooted) Master node will not get a chance to write the recovery.conf file; the rebooted Master node will return to the cluster as a second Master node. To prevent this, start the Failover Manager agent before starting the database server. The agent will start in idle mode, and check to see if there is already a master in the cluster. If there is a master node, the agent will verify that a recovery.conf file exists, and the database will not start as a second master.

4.1 Managing a Failover Manager Cluster

Once configured, a Failover Manager cluster requires no regular maintenance. The following sections provide information about performing the management tasks that may occasionally be required by a Failover Manager Cluster.

By default, some of the commands listed below must be invoked by efm or by an OS superuser; an administrator can selectively permit users to invoke these commands by adding the user to the efm group. The commands are:

•	efm allow-node

•	efm disallow-node

•	efm promote

•	efm resume

•	efm set-priority

•	efm stop-cluster

•	efm upgrade-conf

4.1.1 Starting the Failover Manager Cluster

You can start the nodes of a Failover Manager cluster in any order.

To start the Failover Manager cluster on RHEL 6.x or CentOS 6.x, assume superuser privileges, and invoke the command:

service efm-3.3 start

To start the Failover Manager cluster on RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x, assume superuser privileges, and invoke the command:

systemctl start efm-3.3

If the cluster properties file for the node specifies that is.witness is true, the node will start as a Witness node.

If the node is not a dedicated Witness node, Failover Manager will connect to the local database and invoke the pg_is_in_recovery() function. If the server responds false, the agent assumes the node is a Master node, and assigns a virtual IP address to the node (if applicable). If the server responds true, the Failover Manager agent assumes that the node is a Standby server. If the server does not respond, the agent will start in an idle state.

After joining the cluster, the Failover Manager agent checks the supplied database credentials to ensure that it can connect to all of the databases within the cluster. If the agent cannot connect, the agent will shut down.

If a new master or standby node joins a cluster, all of the existing nodes will also confirm that they can connect to the database on the new node.

4.1.2 Adding Nodes to a Cluster

You can add a node to a Failover Manager cluster at any time. When you add a node to a cluster, you must modify the cluster to allow the new node, and then tell the new node how to find the cluster. The following steps detail adding a node to a cluster:

1.	Unless auto.allow.hosts is set to true, use the efm allow-node command, to add the IP address of the new node to the Failover Manager allowed node host list. When invoking the command, specify the cluster name and the IP address of the new node:

efm allow-node cluster_name ip_address

For more information about using the efm allow-node command or controlling a Failover Manager service, see Section 5.

Install a Failover Manager agent and configure the cluster properties file on the new node. For more information about modifying the properties file, see Section 3.5.1.

2.	Configure the cluster members file on the new node, adding an entry for the Membership Coordinator. For more information about modifying the cluster members file, see Section 3.5.2.

3.	Assume superuser privileges on the new node, and start the Failover Manager agent. To start the Failover Manager cluster on RHEL 6.x or CentOS 6.x, assume superuser privileges, and invoke the command:

service efm-3.3 start

To start the Failover Manager cluster on RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x, assume superuser privileges, and invoke the command:

systemctl start efm-3.3

When the new node joins the cluster, Failover Manager will send a notification to the administrator email provided in the user.email property, and/or will invoke the specified notification script.

Please Note: To be a useful Standby for the current node, the node must be a standby in the PostgreSQL Streaming Replication scenario.

4.1.3 Changing the Priority of a Standby

If your Failover Manager cluster includes more than one Standby server, you can use the efm set-priority command to influence the promotion priority of a Standby node. Invoke the command on any existing member of the Failover Manager cluster, and specify a priority value after the IP address of the member.

For example, the following command instructs Failover Manager that the acctg cluster member that is monitoring 10.0.1.9:7800 is the primary Standby (1):

efm set-priority acctg 10.0.1.9:7800 1

In the event of a failover, Failover Manager will first retrieve information from Postgres streaming replication to confirm which Standby node has the most recent data, and promote the node with the least chance of data loss. If two Standby nodes contain equally up-to-date data, the node with a higher user-specified priority value will be promoted to Master. To check the priority value of your Standby nodes, use the command:

efm cluster-status cluster_name

Please note: The promotion priority may change if a node becomes isolated from the cluster, and later re-joins the cluster.

4.1.4 Promoting a Failover Manager Node

You can invoke efm promote on any node of a Failover Manager cluster to start a manual promotion of a Standby database to Master database.

Manual promotion should only be performed during a maintenance window for your database cluster. If you do not have an up-to-date Standby database available, you will be prompted before continuing. To start a manual promotion, assume the identity of efm or the OS superuser, and invoke the command:

efm promote cluster_name [-switchover]
[-sourcenode <address>] [-quiet]

Where:

cluster_name is the name of the Failover Manager cluster.

Include the –switchover option to reconfigure the original Master as a Standby. If you include the –switchover keyword, the cluster must include a master node and at least one standby, and the nodes must be in sync.

Include the –sourcenode keyword to specify the node from which the recovery.conf file will be copied to the master.

Include the -quiet switch to suppress notifications during switchover.

During switchover:

•	A recovery.conf file is copied from an existing standby to the master node.

•	The master database is stopped.

•	If you are using a VIP, the address is released from the master node.

•	A standby is promoted to replace the master node, and acquires the VIP.

•	The address of the new master node is added to the recovery.conf file.

•	The old master is restarted; the agent will resume monitoring it as a standby.

During a manual promotion, the Master agent releases the virtual IP address before creating a recovery.conf file in the directory specified by the db.recovery.conf.dir property. The Master agent remains running, and assumes a status of Idle.

The Standby agent confirms that the virtual IP address is no longer in use before pinging a well-known address to ensure that the agent is not isolated from the network. The Standby agent runs the fencing script and promotes the Standby database to Master. The Standby agent then assigns the virtual IP address to the Standby node, and runs the post-promotion script (if applicable).

Please note that this command instructs the service to ignore the value specified in the auto.failover parameter in the cluster properties file.

To return a node to the role of master, place the node first in the promotion list:

efm set-priority cluster_name ip_address priority

Then, perform a manual promotion:

efm promote cluster_name ‑switchover

For more information about using the efm utility, see Section 5.3.

4.1.5 Stopping a Failover Manager Agent

When you stop an agent, Failover Manager will remove the node's address from the cluster members list on all of the running nodes of the cluster, but will not remove the address from the Failover Manager Allowed node host list.

To stop the Failover Manager agent on RHEL 6.x or CentOS 6.x, assume superuser privileges, and invoke the command:

service efm-3.3 stop

To stop the Failover Manager agent on RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x, assume superuser privileges, and invoke the command:

systemctl stop efm-3.3

Until you invoke the efm disallow-node command (removing the node's address of the node from the Allowed node host list), you can use the service efm-3.3 start command to restart the node at a later date without first running the efm allow-node command again.

Please note that stopping an agent does not signal the cluster that the agent has failed.

4.1.6 Stopping a Failover Manager Cluster

To stop a Failover Manager cluster, connect to any node of a Failover Manager cluster, assume the identity of efm or the OS superuser, and invoke the command:

efm stop-cluster cluster_name

The command will cause all Failover Manager agents to exit. Terminating the Failover Manager agents completely disables all failover functionality.

Please Note: when you invoke the efm stop-cluster command, all authorized node information is lost from the Allowed node host list.

4.1.7 Removing a Node from a Cluster

The efm disallow-node command removes the IP address of a node from the Failover Manager Allowed node host list. Assume the identity of efm or the OS superuser on any existing node (that is currently part of the running cluster), and invoke the efm disallow-node command, specifying the cluster name and the IP address of the node:

efm disallow-node cluster_name ip_address

The efm disallow-node command will not stop a running agent; the service will continue to run on the node until you stop the agent (for information about controlling the agent, see Section 5). If the agent or cluster is subsequently stopped, the node will not be allowed to rejoin the cluster, and will be removed from the failover priority list (and will be ineligible for promotion).

After invoking the efm disallow-node command, you must use the efm allow-node command to add the node to the cluster again. For more information about using the efm utility, see Section 5.3.

4.2 Monitoring a Failover Manager Cluster

You can use either the Failover Manager efm cluster-status command or the PEM Client graphical interface to check the current status of a monitored node of a Failover Manager cluster.

4.2.1 Reviewing the Cluster Status Report

The cluster-status command returns a report that contains information about the status of the Failover Manager cluster. To invoke the command, enter:

# efm cluster-status cluster_name

The following status report is for a cluster named edb that has four nodes running:

efm cluster-status efm
Cluster Status: efm

Agent Type Address Agent DB VIP
-----------------------------------------------------
Witness 172.19.12.170 UP N/A
Master 172.19.13.105 UP UP 172.19.13.107*
Standby 172.19.13.113 UP UP 172.19.13.106
Standby 172.19.14.106 UP UP 172.19.13.108

Allowed node host list:
172.19.12.170 172.19.13.113 172.19.13.105 172.19.14.106

Membership coordinator: 172.19.12.170

Standby priority host list:
172.19.13.113 172.19.14.106

Promote Status:

DB Type Address XLog Loc Info
-------------------------------------------------------
Master 172.19.13.105 0/31000140
Standby 172.19.13.113 0/31000140
Standby 172.19.14.106 0/31000140

Standby database(s) in sync with master. It is safe to promote.

[root@FOUR efm-3.3]}:

The Cluster Status section provides an overview of the status of the agents that reside on each node of the cluster:

Cluster Status: efm

Agent Type Address Agent DB VIP
-----------------------------------------------------
Witness 172.19.12.170 UP N/A
Master 172.19.13.105 UP UP 172.19.13.107*
Standby 172.19.13.113 UP UP 172.19.13.106
Standby 172.19.14.106 UP UP 172.19.13.108

The asterisk (*) after the VIP address indicates that the address is available for connections. If a VIP address is not followed by an asterisk, the address has been associated with the node (in the properties file), but the address is not currently in use.

Failover Manager agents provide the information displayed in the Cluster Status section.

The Allowed node host list and Standby priority host list provide an easy way to tell which nodes are allowed to join the cluster, and the promotion order of the nodes. The IP address of the Membership coordinator is also displayed in the report:

Allowed node host list:
172.19.12.170 172.19.13.113 172.19.13.105 172.19.14.106

Membership coordinator: 172.19.12.170

Standby priority host list:
172.19.13.113 172.19.14.106

The Promote Status section of the report is the result of a direct query from the node on which you are invoking the cluster-status command to each database in the cluster; the query also returns the transaction log location of each database.

Promote Status:

DB Type Address XLog Loc Info
-------------------------------------------------------
Master 172.19.13.105 0/31000140
Standby 172.19.13.113 0/31000140
Standby 172.19.14.106 0/31000140

Standby database(s) in sync with master. It is safe to promote.

If a database is down (or if the database has been restarted, but the resume command has not yet been invoked), the state of the agent that resides on that host will be Idle. If an agent is idle, the cluster status report will include a summary of the condition of the idle node:

Agent Type Address Agent DB VIP
-----------------------------------------------------
Idle 172.19.18.105 UP UP 172.19.13.105

Exit Codes

The cluster status process returns an exit code that is based on the state of the cluster:

•	An exit code of 0 indicates that all agents are running, and the databases on the Master and Standby nodes are running and in sync.

•	A non-zero exit code indicates that there is a problem. The following problems can trigger a non-zero exit code:

A database is down or unknown (or has an idle agent).

Failover Manager cannot decrypt the provided database password.

There is a problem contacting the databases to get xlog locations.

There is no Master agent.

There are no Standby agents.

One or more Standby nodes are not in sync with the Master.

 

4.2.2 Monitoring Streaming Replication with Postgres Enterprise Manager

If you use Postgres Enterprise Manager (PEM) to monitor your servers, you can configure the Streaming Replication Analysis dashboard (part of the PEM graphical interface) to display the state of a Master or Standby node that is part of a Streaming Replication scenario.

Figure 4.1 - The Streaming Replication dashboard (Master node)

The Streaming Replication Analysis Dashboard (shown in Figure 4.1) displays statistical information about activity for any monitored server on which streaming replication is enabled. The dashboard header identifies the status of the monitored server (either Replication Master or Replication Slave), and displays the date and time that the server was last started, the date and time that the page was last updated, and a current count of triggered alerts for the server.

When reviewing the dashboard for a Replication Slave (a Standby node), a label at the bottom of the dashboard confirms the status of the server (see Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2 - The Streaming Replication dashboard (Standby node)

By default, the PEM replication probes that provide information for the Streaming Replication Analysis dashboard are disabled.

To view the Streaming Replication Analysis dashboard for the Master node of a replication scenario, you must enable the following probes:

•	Streaming Replication

•	WAL Archive Status

To view the Streaming Replication Analysis dashboard for the Standby node of a replication scenario, you must enable the following probes:

•	Streaming Replication Lag Time

For more information about PEM, please visit the EnterpriseDB website at:

http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services-training/products/postgres-enterprise-manager

4.3 Running Multiple Agents on a Single Node

You can monitor multiple database clusters that reside on the same host by running multiple Master or Standby agents on that Failover Manager node. You may also run multiple Witness agents on a single node. To configure Failover Manager to monitor more than one database cluster, while ensuring that Failover Manager agents from different clusters do not interfere with each other, you must:

1.	Create a cluster properties file for each member of each cluster that defines a unique set of properties and the role of the node within the cluster.

2.	Create a cluster members file for each member of each cluster that lists the members of the cluster.

3.	Customize the service script (on a RHEL or CentOS 6.x system) or the unit file (on a RHEL or CentOS 7.x system) for each cluster to specify the names of the cluster properties and the cluster members files.

4.	Start the services for each cluster.

The examples that follow uses two database clusters (acctg and sales) running on the same node:

•	Data for acctg resides in /opt/pgdata1; its server is monitoring port 5444.

•	Data for sales resides in /opt/pgdata2; its server is monitoring port 5445.

To run a Failover Manager agent for both of these database clusters, use the efm.properties.in template to create two properties files. Each cluster properties file must have a unique name. For this example, we create acctg.properties and sales.properties to match the acctg and sales database clusters.

The following parameters must be unique in each cluster properties file:

admin.port
bind.address
db.port
db.recovery.conf.dir
virtualIp (if used)
virtualIp.interface (if used)

Within each cluster properties file, the db.port parameter should specify a unique value for each cluster, while the db.user and db.database parameter may have the same value or a unique value. For example, the acctg.properties file may specify:

db.user=efm_user
db.password.encrypted=7c801b32a05c0c5cb2ad4ffbda5e8f9a
db.port=5444
db.database=acctg_db

While the sales.properties file may specify:

db.user=efm_user
db.password.encrypted=e003fea651a8b4a80fb248a22b36f334
db.port=5445
db.database=sales_db

Some parameters require special attention when setting up more than one Failover Manager cluster agent on the same node. If multiple agents reside on the same node, each port must be unique. Any two ports will work, but it may be easier to keep the information clear if using ports that are not too close to each other.

When creating the cluster properties file for each cluster, the db.recovery.conf.dir parameters must also specify values that are unique for each respective database cluster.

The following parameters are used when assigning the virtual IP address to a node. If your Failover Manager cluster does not use a virtual IP address, leave these parameters blank.

virtualIp
virtualIp.interface
virtualIp.prefix

This parameter value is determined by the virtual IP addresses being used and may or may not be the same for both acctg.properties and sales.properties.

After creating the acctg.properties and sales.properties files, create a service script or unit file for each cluster that points to the respective property files; this step is platform specific. If you are using RHEL 6.x or CentOS 6.x, see Section 4.3.1; if you are using RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x, see Section 4.3.2.

Please note: If you are using a custom service script or unit file, you must manually update the file to reflect the new service name when you upgrade Failover Manager.

4.3.1 RHEL 6.x or CentOS 6.x

If you are using RHEL 6.x or CentOS 6.x, you should copy the efm-3.3 service script to new file with a name that is unique for each cluster. For example:

# cp /etc/init.d/efm-3.3 /etc/init.d/efm-acctg

# cp /etc/init.d/efm-3.3 /etc/init.d/efm-sales

Then edit the CLUSTER variable, modifying the cluster name from efm to acctg or sales.

After creating the service scripts, run:

# chkconfig efm-acctg on

# chkconfig efm-sales on

Then, use the new service scripts to start the agents. For example, you can start the acctg agent with the command:

# service efm-acctg start

4.3.2 RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x

If you are using RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x, you should copy the efm-3.3 unit file to new file with a name that is unique for each cluster. For example, if you have two clusters (named acctg and sales), the unit file names might be:

/etc/systemd/system/efm-acctg.service

/etc/systemd/system/efm-sales.service

Then, edit the CLUSTER variable within each unit file, changing the specified cluster name from efm to the new cluster name. For example, for a cluster named acctg, the value would specify:

Environment=CLUSTER=acctg

You must also update the value of the PIDfile parameter to specify the new cluster name. For example:

PIDFile=/var/run/efm-3.3/acctg.pid

After copying the service scripts, use the following commands to enable the services:

# systemctl enable efm-acctg.service

# systemctl enable efm-sales.service

Then, use the new service scripts to start the agents. For example, you can start the acctg agent with the command:

# systemctl start efm-acctg

For information about customizing a unit file, please visit:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Systemd#How_do_I_customize_a_unit_file.2F_add_a_custom_unit_file.3F

5 Controlling the Failover Manager Service

Each node in a Failover Manager cluster hosts a Failover Manager agent that is controlled by a service script. By default, the service script expects to find:

•	A configuration file named efm.properties that contains the properties used by the Failover Manager service. Each node of a replication scenario must contain a properties file that provides information about the node.

•	A cluster members file named efm.nodes that contains a list of the cluster members. Each node of a replication scenario must contain a cluster members list.

Note that if you are running multiple clusters on a single node you will need to manually create configuration files with cluster-specific names and modify the service script for the corresponding clusters.

The commands that control the Failover Manager service are platform-specific; for information about controlling Failover Manager on a RHEL 6.x or CentOS 6.x host, see Section 5.1. If you are using RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x, see Section 5.2.

5.1 Using the service Utility on RHEL 6.x and CentOS 6.x

On RHEL 6.x and CentOS 6.x, Failover Manager runs as a Linux service named (by default) efm-3.3 that is located in /etc/init.d. Each database cluster monitored by Failover Manager will run a copy of the service on each node of the replication cluster.

Use the following service commands to control a Failover Manager agent that resides on a RHEL 6.x or CentOS 6.x host:

service efm-3.3 start

The start command starts the Failover Manager agent on the current node. The local Failover Manager agent monitors the local database and communicates with Failover Manager on the other nodes. You can start the nodes in a Failover Manager cluster in any order.

This command must be invoked by root.

service efm-3.3 stop

Stop the Failover Manager on the current node. This command must be invoked by root.

service efm-3.3 status

The status command returns the status of the Failover Manager agent on which it is invoked. You can invoke the status command on any node to instruct Failover Manager to return status information. For example:

[witness@localhost ~]# service efm-3.3 status

efm-3.3 (pid 50836) is running...

service efm-3.3 help

Display online help for the Failover Manager service script.

5.2 Using the systemctl Utility on RHEL 7.x and CentOS 7.x

On RHEL 7.x and CentOS 7.x, Failover Manager runs as a Linux service named (by default) efm-3.3.service that is located in /usr/lib/systemd/system. Each database cluster monitored by Failover Manager will run a copy of the service on each node of the replication cluster.

Use the following systemctl commands to control a Failover Manager agent that resides on a RHEL 7.x or CentOS 7.x host:

systemctl start efm-3.3

The start command starts the Failover Manager agent on the current node. The local Failover Manager agent monitors the local database and communicates with Failover Manager on the other nodes. You can start the nodes in a Failover Manager cluster in any order.

This command must be invoked by root.

systemctl stop efm-3.3

Stop the Failover Manager on the current node. This command must be invoked by root.

systemctl status efm-3.3

The status command returns the status of the Failover Manager agent on which it is invoked. You can invoke the status command on any node to instruct Failover Manager to return status and server startup information.

[root@ONE ~]}> systemctl status efm-3.3

efm-3.3.service - EnterpriseDB Failover Manager 3.3

Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/efm-3.3.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)

Active: active (running) since Wed 2013-02-14 14:02:16 EST; 4s ago

Process: 58125 ExecStart=/bin/bash -c /usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/runefm.sh start ${CLUSTER} (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Main PID: 58180 (java)

CGroup: /system.slice/efm-3.3.service

└─58180 /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.161-0.b14.el7_4.x86_64/jre/bin/java -cp /usr/edb/efm-3.3/lib/EFM-3.3.0.jar -Xmx128m -agentlib:jdwp=transport...

5.3 Using the efm Utility

Failover Manager provides the efm utility to assist with cluster management. The RPM installer adds the utility to the /usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin directory when you install Failover Manager.

efm allow-node cluster_name

Invoke the efm allow-node command to allow the specified node to join the cluster. When invoking the command, provide the name of the cluster and the IP address of the joining node.

This command must be invoked by efm, a member of the efm group, or root.

efm cluster-status cluster_name

Invoke the efm cluster-status command to display the status of a Failover Manager cluster. For more information about the cluster status report, see Section 4.2.1.

efm cluster-status-json cluster_name

Invoke the efm cluster-status-json command to display the status of a Failover Manager cluster in json format. While the format of the displayed information is different than the display generated by the efm cluster-status command, the information source is the same.

The following example is generated by querying the status of a healthy cluster with two nodes:

{
"nodes": {
"172.16.144.176": {
"type": "Witness",
"agent": "UP",
"db": "N\/A",
"vip": "",
"vip_active": false
},
"172.16.144.177": {
"type": "Master",
"agent": "UP",
"db": "UP",
"vip": "",
"vip_active": false,
"xlog": "2\/77000220",
"xloginfo": ""
},
"172.16.144.180": {
"type": "Standby",
"agent": "UP",
"db": "UP",
"vip": "",
"vip_active": false,
"xlog": "2\/77000220",
"xloginfo": ""
}
},
"allowednodes": [
"172.16.144.177",
"172.16.144.160",
"172.16.144.180",
"172.16.144.176"
],
"membershipcoordinator": "172.16.144.177",
"failoverpriority": [
"172.16.144.180"
],
"minimumstandbys": 0,
"missingnodes": [],
"messages": []
}

efm disallow-node cluster_name ip_address

Invoke the efm disallow-node command to remove the specified node from the allowed hosts list, and prevent the node from joining a cluster. Provide the name of the cluster and the IP address of the node when calling the efm disallow-node command. This command must be invoked by efm, a member of the efm group, or root.

efm encrypt cluster_name [--from-env]

Invoke the efm encrypt command to encrypt the database password before include the password in the cluster properties file. Include the --from-env option to instruct Failover Manager to use the value specified in the EFMPASS environment variable, and execute without user input. For more information, see Section 3.5.1.2.

efm promote cluster_name [-switchover [-sourcenode address]
-quiet]]

The promote command instructs Failover Manager to perform a manual failover of standby to master.

Manual promotion should only be attempted if the status command reports that the cluster includes a Standby node that is up-to-date with the Master. If there is no up-to-date Standby, Failover Manager will prompt you before continuing.

Include the –switchover clause to promote a standby node, and reconfigure a master node as a standby node. Include the -sourcenode keyword, and specify a node address to indicate the node whose recovery.conf file will be copied to the old master node (making it a standby). Include the -quiet keyword to suppress notifications during the switchover process.

This command must be invoked by efm, a member of the efm group, or root.

Please note that this command instructs the service to ignore the value specified in the auto.failover parameter in the cluster properties file.

efm resume cluster_name

Invoke the efm resume command to resume monitoring a previously stopped database. This command must be invoked by efm, a member of the efm group, or root.

efm set-priority cluster_name ip_address priority

Invoke the efm set-priority command to assign a failover priority to a standby node. The value specifies the order in which the new node will be used in the event of a failover. This command must be invoked by efm, a member of the efm group, or root.

priority is an integer value of 1 to n, where n is the number of standby nodes in the list. Specify a value of 1 to indicate that the new node is the primary standby, and will be the first node promoted in the event of a failover. A priority of 0 instructs Failover Manager to not promote the standby.

efm stop-cluster cluster_name

Invoke the efm stop-cluster command to stop Failover Manager on all nodes. This command instructs Failover Manager to connect to each node on the cluster and instruct the existing members to shut down. The command has no effect on running databases, but when the command completes, there is no failover protection in place.

Please note: when you invoke the efm stop-cluster command, all authorized node information is removed from the Allowed node host list.

This command must be invoked by efm, a member of the efm group, or root.

efm upgrade-conf cluster_name [-source directory]

Invoke the efm upgrade-conf command to copy the configuration files from an existing Failover Manager installation, and add parameters required by a Failover Manager 3.3 installation. Provide the name of the previous cluster when invoking the utility. This command must be invoked with root privileges.

If you are upgrading from a Failover Manager configuration that does not use sudo, include the -source flag and specify the name of the directory in which the configuration files reside when invoking upgrade-conf.

efm --help

Invoke the efm --help command to display online help for the Failover Manager utility commands.

6 Controlling Logging

Failover Manager writes and stores one log file per agent and one startup log per agent in /var/log/cluster_name-3.3 (where cluster_name specifies the name of the cluster).

You can control the level of detail written to the agent log by modifying the jgroups.loglevel and efm.loglevel parameters in the cluster properties file:

# Logging levels for JGroups and EFM.
# Valid values are: TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR
# Default value: INFO
# It is not necessary to increase these values unless debugging a
# specific issue. If nodes are not discovering each other at
# startup, increasing the jgroups level to DEBUG will show
# information about the TCP connection attempts that may help
# diagnose the connection failures.

jgroups.loglevel=INFO
efm.loglevel=INFO

The logging facilities use the Java logging library and logging levels. The log levels (in order from most logging output to least) are:

TRACE
DEBUG
INFO
WARN
ERROR

For example, if you set the efm.loglevel parameter to WARN, Failover Manager will only log messages at the WARN level and above (WARN and ERROR).

By default, Failover Manager log files are rotated daily, compressed, and stored for a week. You can modify the file rotation schedule by changing settings in the log rotation file (/etc/logrotate.d/efm-3.3). For more information about modifying the log rotation schedule, consult the logrotate man page:

$ man logrotate

6.1 Enabling syslog Log File Entries

Release 3.3 of Failover Manager adds support for syslog logging. To implement syslog logging, you must configure syslog to allow UDP or TCP connections.

To allow a connection to syslog, edit the /etc/rsyslog.conf file and uncomment the protocol you wish to use. You must also ensure that the UDPServerRun or TCPServerRun entry associated with the protocol includes the port number to which log entries will be sent.

For example, the following configuration file entries enable UDP connections to port 514:

# Provides UDP syslog reception
$ModLoad imudp
$UDPServerRun 514

The following configuration file entries enable TCP connections to port 514:

# Provides TCP syslog reception
$ModLoad imtcp
$InputTCPServerRun 514

After modifying the syslog configuration file, restart the rsyslog service to enable the connections:

systemctl restart rsyslog.service

After modifying the rsyslog.conf file on the Failover Manager host, you must modify the Failover Manager properties to enable logging. Use your choice of editor to modify the properties file (/etc/edb/efm-3.3/efm.properties.in) specifying the type of logging that you wish to implement:

# Which logging is enabled.
file.log.enabled=true
syslog.enabled=false

You must also specify syslog details for your system. Use the syslog.protocol parameter to specify the protocol type (UDP or TCP) and the syslog.port parameter to specify the listener port of the syslog host. The syslog.facility value may be used as an identifier for the process that created the entry; the value must be between LOCAL0 and LOCAL7.

# Syslog information. The syslog service must be listening on
# the port for the given protocol, which can be UDP or TCP.
# The facilities supported are LOCAL0 through LOCAL7.
syslog.host=localhost
syslog.port=514
syslog.protocol=UDP
syslog.facility=LOCAL1

For more information about modifying Failover Manager configuration files, please see Section 3.5.

For more information about syslog, please see the syslog man page:

syslog man

7 Notifications

Failover Manager will send e-mail notifications and/or invoke a notification script when a notable event occurs that affects the cluster. If you have configured Failover Manager to send an email notification, you must have an SMTP server running on port 25 on each node of the cluster. Use the following parameters to configure notification behavior for Failover Manager:

user.email
script.notification

For more information about editing the configuration properties, see Section 3.5.1.1.

The body of the notification contains details about the event that triggered the notification, and about the current state of the cluster. For example:

EFM node: 10.0.1.11
Cluster name: acctg
Database name: postgres
VIP: ip_address (Active|Inactive)

Database health is not being monitored.

The VIP field displays the IP address and state of the virtual IP if implemented for the node.

Failover Manager assigns a severity level to each notification. The following levels indicate increasing levels of attention required:

INFO indicates an informational message about the agent and does not require any manual intervention (for example, Failover Manager has started or stopped).

WARNING indicates that an event has happened that requires the administrator to check on the system (for example, failover has occurred).

SEVERE indicates that a serious event has happened and requires the immediate attention of the administrator (for example, failover was attempted, but was unable to complete).

The severity level designates the urgency of the notification. A notification with a severity level of SEVERE requires user attention immediately, while a notification with a severity level of INFO will call your attention to operational information about your cluster that does not require user action. Notification severity levels are not related to logging levels; all notifications are sent regardless of the log level detail specified in the configuration file.

You can use the notification.level property to specify the minimum severity level that will trigger a notification; for more information, see Section 3.5.1.1.

The conditions listed in the table below will trigger an INFO level notification:

Subject	Description
Executed fencing script	Executed fencing script script_name Results: script_results
Executed post-promotion script	Executed post-promotion script script_name Results: script_results
Executed remote pre-promotion script	Executed remote pre-promotion script script_name Results: script_results
Executed remote post-promotion script	Executed remote post-promotion script script_name Results: script_results
Executed post-database failure script	Executed post-database failure script script_name Results: script_results
Executed master isolation script	Executed master isolation script script_name Results: script_results
Witness agent running on node_address for cluster cluster_name	Witness agent is running.
Master agent running on node_address for cluster cluster_name	Master agent is running and database health is being monitored.
Standby agent running on node_address for cluster cluster_name	Standby agent is running and database health is being monitored.
Idle agent running on node node_address for cluster cluster_name	Idle agent is running. After starting the local database, the agent can be resumed.
Assigning VIP to node node_address	Assigning VIP VIP_address to node node_address Results: script_results
Releasing VIP from node node_address	Releasing VIP VIP_address from node node_address Results: script_results
Witness agent exited on node_address for cluster cluster_name	Witness agent has exited.
Master agent exited on node_address for cluster cluster_name	Database health is not being monitored.
Cluster cluster_name notified that master node has left	Failover is disabled for the cluster until the master agent is restarted.
Standby agent exited on node_address for cluster cluster_name	Database health is not being monitored.
Agent exited during promotion on node_address for cluster cluster_name	Database health is not being monitored.
Agent exited on node_address for cluster cluster_name	The agent has exited. This is generated by an agent in the Idle state.
Agent exited for cluster cluster_name	The agent has exited. This notification is usually generated during startup when an agent exits before startup has completed.
Starting auto resume check for cluster cluster_name	The agent on this node will check every auto.resume.period seconds to see if it can resume monitoring the failed database. The cluster should be checked during this time and the agent stopped if the database will not be started again. See the agent log for more details.
Executed agent resumed script	Executed agent resumed script script_name Results: script_results

The conditions listed in the table below will trigger a WARNING level notification:

Subject	Description
Virtual IP address assigned to non-master node	The virtual IP address appears to be assigned to a non-master node. To avoid any conflicts, Failover Manager will release the VIP. You should confirm that the VIP is assigned to your master node and manually reassign the address if it is not.
Virtual IP address not assigned to master node.	The virtual IP address appears to not be assigned to a master node. EDB Postgres Failover Manager will attempt to reacquire the VIP.
No standby agent in cluster for cluster cluster_name	The standbys on cluster_name have left the cluster.
Standby agent failed for cluster cluster_name	A standby agent on cluster_name has left the cluster, but the coordinator has detected that the standby database is still running.
Standby database failed for cluster cluster_name	A standby agent has signaled that its database has failed. The other nodes also cannot reach the standby database.
Standby agent cannot reach database for cluster cluster_name	A standby agent has signaled database failure, but the other nodes have detected that the standby database is still running.
Cluster cluster_name has dropped below three nodes	At least three nodes are required for full failover protection. Please add witness or agent node to the cluster.
Subset of cluster cluster_name disconnected from master	This node is no longer connected to the majority of the cluster cluster_name. Because this node is part of a subset of the cluster, failover will not be attempted. Current nodes that are visible are: node_address
Promotion has started on cluster cluster_name.	The promotion of a standby has started on cluster cluster_name.
Witness failure for cluster cluster_name	Witness running at node_address has left the cluster.
Idle agent failure for cluster cluster_name.	Idle agent running at node_address has left the cluster.
One or more nodes isolated from network for cluster cluster_name	This node appears to be isolated from the network. Other members seen in the cluster are: node_name
Node no longer isolated from network for cluster cluster_name.	This node is no longer isolated from the network.
Standby agent tried to promote, but master DB is still running	The standby EFM agent tried to promote itself, but detected that the master DB is still running on node_address. This usually indicates that the master EFM agent has exited. Failover has NOT occurred.
Standby agent started to promote, but master has rejoined.	The standby EFM agent started to promote itself, but found that a master agent has rejoined the cluster. Failover has NOT occurred.
Standby agent tried to promote, but could not verify master DB	The standby EFM agent tried to promote itself, but could not detect whether or not the master DB is still running on node_address. Failover has NOT occurred.
Standby agent tried to promote, but VIP appears to still be assigned	The standby EFM agent tried to promote itself, but could not because the virtual IP address (VIP_address) appears to still be assigned to another node. Promoting under these circumstances could cause data corruption. Failover has NOT occurred.
Standby agent tried to promote, but appears to be orphaned	The standby EFM agent tried to promote itself, but could not because the well-known server (server_address) could not be reached. This usually indicates a network issue that has separated the standby agent from the other agents. Failover has NOT occurred.
Failover has not occurred	An agent has detected that the master database is no longer available in cluster cluster_name, but there are no standby nodes available for failover.
Potential manual failover required on cluster cluster_name.	A potential failover situation was detected for cluster cluster_name. Automatic failover has been disabled for this cluster, so manual intervention is required.
Failover has completed on cluster cluster_name	Failover has completed on cluster cluster_name.
Lock file for cluster cluster_name has been removed	The lock file for cluster cluster_name has been removed from: path_name on node node_address. This lock prevents multiple agents from monitoring the same cluster on the same node. Please restore this file to prevent accidentally starting another agent for cluster.
recovery.conf file for cluster cluster_name has been found	A recovery.conf file for cluster cluster_name has been found at: path_name on master node node_address. This may be problematic should you attempt to restart the DB on this node.
recovery_target_timeline is not set to latest in recovery.conf	The recovery_target_timeline parameter is not set to latest in the recovery.conf file. The standby server will not be able to follow a timeline change that occurs when a new master is promoted.
trigger_file path given in recovery.conf is not writable	The path provided for the trigger_file parameter in the recovery.conf file is not writable by the db_service_owner user. Failover Manager will not be able to promote the database if needed.
Promotion has not occurred for cluster cluster_name	A promotion was attempted but there is already a node being promoted: ip_address.
Standby not reconfigured after failover in cluster cluster_name	The auto.reconfigure property has been set to false for this node. The node has not been reconfigured to follow the new master node after a failover.
Could not resume replay for cluster cluster_name	Could not resume replay for standby being promoted. Manual intervention may be required. Error: error_decription This error is returned if the server encounters an error when invoking replay during the promotion of a standby.
Could not resume replay for standby standby_id.	Could not resume replay for standby. Manual intervention may be required. Error: error_message.
Possible problem with database timeout values	Your remote.timeout value (value) is higher than your local.timeout value (value). If the local database takes too long to respond, the local agent could assume that the database has failed though other agents can connect. While this will not cause a failover, it could force the local agent to stop monitoring, leaving you without failover protection.
No standbys available for promotion in cluster cluster_name	The current number of standby nodes in the cluster has dropped to the minimum number: number. There cannot be a failover unless another standby node(s) is added or made promotable.
Custom monitor timeout for cluster cluster_name	The following custom monitoring script has timed out: script_name
Custom monitor 'safe mode' failure for cluster cluster_name	The following custom monitor script has failed, but is being run in "safe mode": script_name. Output: script_results

The conditions listed in the table below will trigger a SEVERE notification:

Subject	Description
Unable to connect to DB on node_address	The maximum connections limit has been reached.
Unable to connect to DB on node_address	Invalid password for db.user=user_name.
Unable to connect to DB on node_address	Invalid authorization specification.
Master cannot ping local database for cluster cluster_name	The master agent can no longer reach the local database running at node_address. Other nodes are able to access the database remotely, so the master will not release the VIP and/or create a recovery.conf file. The master agent will become idle until the resume command is run to resume monitoring the database.
Fencing script error	Fencing script script_name failed to execute successfully. Exit Value: exit_code Results: script_results Failover has NOT occurred.
Post-promotion script failed	Post-promotion script script_name failed to execute successfully. Exit Value: exit_code Results: script_results
Remote-post-promotion script failed	Remote-post-promotion script script_name failed to execute successfully Exit Value: exit_code Results: script_results Node: node_address
Remote-pre-promotion script failed	Remote-pre-promotion script script_name failed to execute successfully Exit Value: exit_code Results: script_results Node: node_address
Post-database failure script error	Post-database failure script script_name failed to execute successfully. Exit Value: exit_code Results: script_results
Agent resumed script error	Agent resumed script script_name failed to execute successfully. Results: script_results
Master isolation script failed	Master isolation script script_name failed to execute successfully. Exit Value: exit_code Results: script_results
Could not promote standby	The trigger file file_name could not be created on node. Could not promote standby. Error details: message_details
Error creating recovery.conf file on node_address for cluster cluster_name	There was an error creating the recovery.conf file on master node node_address during promotion. Promotion has continued, but requires manual intervention to ensure that the old master node can not be restarted. Error details: message_details
An unexpected error has occurred for cluster cluster_name	An unexpected error has occurred on this node. Please check the agent log for more information. Error: error_details
Master database being fenced off for cluster cluster_name	The master database has been isolated from the majority of the cluster. The cluster is telling the master agent at ip_address to fence off the master database to prevent two masters when the rest of the failover manager cluster promotes a standby.
Isolated master database shutdown.	The isolated master database has been shutdown by failover manager.
Master database being fenced off for cluster cluster_name	The master database has been isolated from the majority of the cluster. Before the master could finish detecting isolation, a standby was promoted and has rejoined this node in the cluster. This node is isolating itself to avoid more than one master database.
Could not assign VIP to node node_address	Failover manager could not assign the VIP address for some reason.
master_or_standby database failure for cluster cluster_name	The database has failed on the specified node.
Agent is timing out for cluster cluster_name	This agent has timed out trying to reach the local database. After the timeout, the agent could successfully ping the database and has resumed monitoring. However, the node should be checked to make sure it is performing normally to prevent a possible database or agent failure.
Resume timed out for cluster cluster_name	This agent could not resume monitoring after reconfiguring and restarting the local database. See agent log for details.
Internal state mismatch for cluster cluster_name	The failover manager cluster's internal state did not match the actual state of the cluster members. This is rare and can be caused by a timing issue of nodes joining the cluster and/or changing their state. The problem should be resolved, but you should check the cluster status as well to verify. Details of the mismatch can be found in the agent log file.
Failover has not occurred	An agent has detected that the master database is no longer available in cluster cluster_name, but there are not enough standby nodes available for failover..
Database in wrong state on node_address	The standby agent has detected that the local database is no longer in recovery. The agent will now become idle. Manual intervention is required.
Database in wrong state on node_address	The master agent has detected that the local database is in recovery. The agent will now become idle. Manual intervention is required.
Database connection failure for cluster cluster_name	This node is unable to connect to the database running on: node_address Until this is fixed, failover may not work properly because this node will not be able to check if the database is running or not.
Standby custom monitor failure for cluster cluster_name	The following custom monitor script has failed on a standby node. The agent will stop monitoring the local database. Script location: script_name Script output: script_results
Master custom monitor failure for cluster cluster_name	The following custom monitor script has failed on a master node. EFM will attempt to promote a standby. Script location: script_name Script output: script_results
Load balancer attach scrip error	Load balancer attach script script_name failed to execute successfully. Exit Value: exit_code Results: script_results
Load balancer detach script error	Load balancer detach script script_name failed to execute successfully. Exit Value: exit_code Results: script_results

Please note: In addition to sending notices to the administrative email address, all notifications are recorded in the cluster log file (/var/log/efm-3.3/cluster_name.log).

8 Supported Failover and Failure Scenarios

Failover Manager monitors a cluster for failures that may or may not result in failover.

Failover Manager supports a very specific and limited set of failover scenarios. Failover can occur:

•	if the Master database crashes or is shutdown.

•	if the node hosting the Master database crashes or becomes unreachable.

Failover Manager makes every attempt to verify the accuracy of these conditions. If agents cannot confirm that the Master database or node has failed, Failover Manager will not perform any failover actions on the cluster.

Failover Manager also supports a no auto-failover mode for situations where you want Failover Manager to monitor and detect failover conditions, but not perform an automatic failover to a Standby. In this mode, a notification is sent to the administrator when failover conditions are met. To disable automatic failover, modify the cluster properties file, setting the auto.failover parameter to false (see Section 3.5.1.1).

Failover Manager will alert an administrator to situations that require administrator intervention, but that do not merit promoting a Standby database to Master.

8.1 Master Database is Down

If the agent running on the Master database node detects a failure of the Master database, Failover Manager begins the process of confirming the failure (see Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1 - Confirming the Failure of the Master Database.

If the agent on the Master node detects that the Master database has failed, all agents attempt to connect directly to the Master database. If an agent can connect to the database, Failover Manager sends a notification about the state of the Master node. If no agent can connect, the Master agent declares database failure and releases the VIP (if applicable).

If no agent can reach the virtual IP address or the database server, Failover Manager starts the failover process. The Standby agent on the most up-to-date node runs a fencing script (if applicable), promotes the Standby database to Master database, and assigns the virtual IP address to the Standby node. Any additional Standby nodes are configured to replicate from the new master unless auto.reconfigure is set to false. If applicable, the agent runs a post-promotion script.

Returning the Node to the Cluster

To recover from this scenario without restarting the entire cluster, you should:

1.	Restart the database on the original Master node as a Standby database.

2.	Invoke the efm resume command on the original Master node.

Returning the Node to the Role of Master

After returning the node to the cluster as a Standby, you can easily return the node to the role of Master:

1.	If the cluster has more than one Standby node, use the efm allow-node command to set the node's failover priority to 1.

2.	Invoke the efm promote -switchover command to promote the node to its original role of Master node. For more information about the command, please see Section 5.3.

8.2 Standby Database is Down

If a Standby agent detects a failure of its database, the agent notifies the other agents; the other agents confirm the state of the database (see Figure 8.2).

Figure 8.2 - Confirming the failure of a Standby Database.

After returning the Standby database to a healthy state, invoke the efm resume command to return the Standby to the cluster.

8.3 Master Agent Exits or Node Fails

If the Failover Manager Master agent crashes or the node fails, a Standby agent will detect the failure and (if appropriate) initiate a failover (see Figure 8.3).

Figure 8.3 - Confirming the failure of the Master Agent.

If an agent detects that the Master agent has left, all agents attempt to connect directly to the Master database. If any agent can connect to the database, an agent sends a notification about the failure of the Master agent. If no agent can connect, the agents attempt to ping the virtual IP address to determine if it has been released.

If no agent can reach the virtual IP address or the database server, Failover Manager starts the failover process. The Standby agent on the most up-to-date node runs a fencing script (if applicable), promotes the Standby database to Master database, and assigns the virtual IP address to the Standby node; if applicable, the agent runs a post-promotion script. Any additional Standby nodes are configured to replicate from the new master unless auto.reconfigure is set to false.

If this scenario has occurred because the master has been isolated from network, the Master agent will detect the isolation and release the virtual IP address and create the recovery.conf file. Failover Manager will perform the previously listed steps on the remaining nodes of the cluster.

To recover from this scenario without restarting the entire cluster, you should:

1.	Restart the original Master node.

2.	Bring the original Master database up as a Standby node.

3.	Start the service on the original Master node.

Please note that stopping an agent does not signal the cluster that the agent has failed.

8.4 Standby Agent Exits or Node Fails

If a Standby agent exits or a Standby node fails, the other agents will detect that it is no longer connected to the cluster.

Figure 8.4 - Failure of Standby Agent.

When the failure is detected, the agents attempt to contact the database that resides on the node; if the agents confirm that there is a problem, Failover Manager sends the appropriate notification to the administrator.

If there is only one Master and one Standby remaining, there is no failover protection in the case of a Master node failure. In the case of a Master database failure, the Master and Standby agents can agree that the database failed and proceed with failover.

8.5 Dedicated Witness Agent Exits / Node Fails

The following scenario details the actions taken if a dedicated Witness (a node that is not hosting a database) fails.

Figure 8.5 - Confirming the Failure of a dedicated Witness.

When an agent detects that the Witness node cannot be reached, Failover Manager notifies the administrator of the state of the Witness (see Figure 8.5).

Note: If there is only one Master and one Standby remaining, there is no failover protection in the case of a Master node failure. In the case of a Master database failure, the Master and Standby agents can agree that the database failed and proceed with failover.

8.6 Nodes Become Isolated from the Cluster

The following scenario details the actions taken if one or more nodes (a minority of the cluster) become isolated from the majority of the cluster.

Figure 8.6 – If members of the cluster become isolated.

If one or more nodes (but less than half of the cluster) become isolated from the rest of the cluster, the remaining cluster behaves as if the nodes have failed. The agents attempt to discern if the Master node is among the isolated nodes; it is, the Master fences itself off from the cluster, while a Standby node (from within the cluster majority) is promoted to replace it. Other Standby nodes are configured to replicate from the new master unless auto.reconfigure is set to false.

Failover Manager then notifies an administrator, and the isolated nodes rejoin the cluster when they are able. When the nodes rejoin the cluster, the failover priority may change.

9 Upgrading an Existing Cluster

Failover Manager provides a utility to assist you when upgrading a Failover Manager cluster. To upgrade an existing cluster, you must:

1.	Install Failover Manager 3.3 on each node of the cluster. For detailed information about installing Failover Manager, see Section 3.

2.

After installing Failover Manager, invoke the efm upgrade-conf utility to create the .properties and .nodes files for Failover Manager 3.3. The Failover Manager installer adds the upgrade utility (efm upgrade-conf) to the /usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin directory. To invoke the utility, assume root privileges, and invoke the command:

efm upgrade-conf cluster_name

The efm upgrade-conf utility locates the .properties and .nodes files of pre-existing clusters and copies the parameter values to a new configuration file for use by Failover Manager. The utility saves the updated copy of the configuration files in the /etc/edb/efm-3.3 directory.

3.	Modify the .properties and .nodes files for EFM 3.3, specifying any new preferences. Version 3.3 of Failover Manager adds the following configuration properties:

check.vip.before.promotion
lock.dir
log.dir
syslog.host
syslog.port
syslog.protocol
syslog.facility
file.log.enabled
syslog.enabled

Use your choice of editor to modify any additional properties in the properties file (located in the /etc/edb/efm-3.3 directory) before starting the service for that node. For detailed information about property settings, see Section 3.5.

4.	Use a version-specific command to stop the old Failover Manager cluster; for example, you can use the following command to stop a version 3.3 cluster:

/usr/efm-3.3/bin/efm stop-cluster efm

5.	Start the new Failover manager service (efm-3.3) on each node of the cluster. For more information about starting the service, see Section 4.1.1.

The following example demonstrates invoking the upgrade utility to create the .properties and .nodes files for a Failover Manager installation:

[root@ONE efm-3.3]}> /usr/edb/efm-3.3/bin/efm upgrade-conf example
Checking directory /etc/edb/efm-3.2
Processing example.properties file
jvm.options property value updated to "-Xmx128m".

The following properties were added in addition to those in previous installed version:
check.vip.before.promotion
lock.dir
log.dir
syslog.host
syslog.port
syslog.protocol
syslog.facility
file.log.enabled
syslog.enabled

Checking directory /etc/edb/efm-3.2
Processing example.nodes file

Upgrade of files is finished. The owner and group for properties and nodes files have been set as 'efm'.

If you are using a Failover Manager configuration without sudo, include the -source flag and specify the name of the directory in which the configuration files reside when invoking upgrade-conf.

If you are using a Failover Manager configuration without sudo, include the -source flag and specify the name of the directory in which the configuration files reside. If the directory is not the configuration default directory, the upgraded files will be created in the directory from which the upgrade-conf command was invoked. For more information, see Section 3.4.1.

Please note: If you are using a custom service script or unit file, you must manually update the file to reflect the new Failover Manager service name when you perform an upgrade.

9.1 Un-installing Failover Manager

After upgrading to Failover Manager 3.3, you can use Yum to remove previous installations of Failover Manager. For example, use the following command to remove Failover Manager 3.2 and any unneeded dependencies:

yum remove edb-efm32

9.2 Performing a Database Update (Minor Version)

This section describes how to perform a quick minor database version upgrade. You can use the steps that follow to upgrade from one minor version to another (for example, from 10.1.5 to version 10.2.7), or to apply a patch release for a version.

You should first update the database server on each Standby node of the Failover Manager cluster. Then, perform a switchover, promoting a Standby node to the role of Master within the Failover Manager cluster. Then, perform a database update on the old master node.

On each node of the cluster you must perform the following steps to update the database server:

1.	Stop the Failover Manager agent.

2.	Stop the database server.

3.	Update the database server.

4.	Start the database service.

5.	Start the Failover Manager agent.

For detailed information about controlling the Advanced Server service, or upgrading your version of Advanced Server, please see the EDB Postgres Advanced Server Guide, available at:

https://www.enterprisedb.com/resources/product-documentation

When your updates are complete, you can use the efm set-priority command to add the old master to the front of the standby list, and then switchover to return the cluster to its original state. For more information about efm set-priority, see Section 5.3.

10 Appendix A - Configuring Streaming Replication

The following section will walk you through the process of configuring a simple two-node replication scenario that uses streaming replication to replicate data from a Master node to a Standby node. The replication process for larger scenarios can be complex; for detailed information about configuration options, please see the PostgreSQL core documentation, available at:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/warm-standby.html#streaming-replication

In the example that follows, we will use a .pgpass file to enable md5 authentication for the replication user – this may or may not be the safest authentication method for your environment. For more information about the supported authentication options, please see the PostgreSQL core documentation at:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/client-authentication.html

The steps that follow configure a simple streaming replication scenario with one Master node and one Standby node, each running an installation of EDB Postgres Advanced Server. In the example:

•	The Master node resides on 146.148.46.44

•	The Standby node resides on 107.178.217.178

•	The replication user name is edbrepuser.

The pathnames and commands referenced in the examples are for Advanced Server hosts that reside on a CentOS 6.x host – you may have to modify paths and commands for your configuration.

Configuring the Master Node

Connect to the master node of the replication scenario, and modify the pg_hba.conf file (located in the data directory under your Postgres installation), adding connection information for the replication user (in our example, edbrepuser):

host replication edbrepuser 107.178.217.178/32 md5

The connection information should specify the address of the standby node of the replication scenario, and your preferred authentication method.

Modify the postgresql.conf file (located in the data directory, under your Postgres installation), adding the following replication parameter and values to the end of the file:

wal_level = hot_standby
max_wal_senders = 8
wal_keep_segments = 128
archive_mode = on
archive_command = 'cp %p /tmp/%f'

Save the configuration file and restart the server:

/etc/init.d/edb-as10 restart

Use the sudo su – command to assume the identity of the enterprisedb database superuser:

sudo su - enterprisedb

Then, start a psql session, connecting to the edb database:

/opt/edb/as10/psql -d edb

At the psql command line, create a user with the replication attribute:

CREATE ROLE edbrepuser WITH REPLICATION LOGIN PASSWORD 'password';

Configuring the Standby Node

Connect to the Standby server, and assume the identity of the database superuser (enterprisedb):

sudo su - enterprisedb

With your choice of editor, create a .pgpass file in the home directory of the enterprisedb user. The .pgpass file holds the password of the replication user in plain-text form; if you are using a .pgpass file, you should ensure that only trusted users have access to the .pgpass file:

Add an entry that specifies connection information for the replication user:

*:5444:*:edbrepuser:password

The server will enforce restrictive permissions on the .pgpass file; use the following command to set the file permissions:

chmod 600 .pgpass

Relinquish the identity of the database superuser:

exit

Then, assume superuser privileges:

sudo su -

You must stop the database server before replacing the data directory on the Standby node with the data directory of the Master node. Use the command:

/etc/init.d/edb-as-10 stop

Then, delete the data directory on the Standby node:

rm -rf /opt/edb/as10/data

After deleting the existing data directory, move into the bin directory and use the pg_basebackup utility to copy the data directory of the Master node to the Standby:

cd /opt/edb/as10/bin
./pg_basebackup –R –D /opt/edb/as10/data
--host=146.148.46.44 –-port=5444
--username=edbrepuser --password

The call to pg_basebackup specifies the IP address of the Master node and the name of the replication user created on the Master node. For more information about the options available with the pg_basebackup utility, see the PostgreSQL core documentation at:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/app-pgbasebackup.html

When prompted by pg_basebackup, provide the password associated with the replication user.

After copying the data directory, change ownership of the directory to the database superuser (enterprisedb):

chown -R enterprisedb /opt/edb/as10/data

Navigate into the data directory:

cd /opt/edb/as10/data

With your choice of editor, create a file named recovery.conf( in the /opt/PostgresPlus/9.xAS/data directory) that includes:

standby_mode = on
primary_conninfo = 'host=146.148.46.44 port=5444 user=edbrepuser sslmode=prefer sslcompression=1 krbsrvname=postgres'
trigger_file = '/opt/edb/as10/data/mytrigger'
restore_command = '/bin/true'
recovery_target_timeline = 'latest'

The primary_conninfo parameter specifies connection information for the replication user on the master node of the replication scenario.

Change ownership of the recovery.conf file to enterprisedb:

chown enterprisedb:enterprisedb recovery.conf

Modify the postgresql.conf file (located in data directory, under the Postgres installation), specifying the following values at the end of the file:

wal_level = hot_standby
max_wal_senders = 8
wal_keep_segments = 128
hot_standby = on

The data file has been copied from the Master node, and will contain the replication parameters specified previously.

Then, restart the server:

/etc/init.d/edb-as-10 start

At this point, the Master node will be replicating data to the Standby node.

Confirming Replication from the Master to Standby

You can confirm that the server is running and replicating by entering the command:

ps -ef | grep postgres

If replication is running, the Standby server will echo:

501 42054 1 0 07:57 pts/1 00:00:00 /opt/PostgresPlus/9.2AS/bin/edb-postgres -D /opt/PostgresPlus/9.2AS/data
501 42055 42054 0 07:57 ? 00:00:00 postgres: logger process
501 42056 42054 0 07:57 ? 00:00:00 postgres: startup process recovering 000000010000000000000004
501 42057 42054 0 07:57 ? 00:00:00 postgres: checkpointer process
501 42058 42054 0 07:57 ? 00:00:00 postgres: writer process
501 42059 42054 0 07:57 ? 00:00:00 postgres: stats collector process
501 42060 42054 0 07:57 ? 00:00:00 postgres: wal receiver process streaming 0/4000150
501 42068 42025 0 07:58 pts/1 00:00:00 grep postgres

If you connect to the Standby with the psql client and query the pg_is_in_recovery() function, the server will reply:

edb=# select pg_is_in_recovery();
pg_is_in_recovery
-------------------
t
(1 row)

Any entries made to the Master node will be replicated to the Standby node. The Standby node will operate in read-only mode; while you can query the Standby server, you will not be able to add entries directly to the database that resides on the Standby node.

Manually Invoking Failover

To promote the Standby to become the Master node, assume the identity of the cluster owner (enterprisedb):

sudo su - enterprisedb

Then, invoke pg_ctl:

/opt/edb/as10/bin/pg_ctl promote -D / opt/edb/as10 /data/

Then, if you connect to the Standby node with psql, the server will confirm that it is no longer a standby node:

edb=# select pg_is_in_recovery();
pg_is_in_recovery
-------------------
f
(1 row)

For more information about configuring and using streaming replication, please see the PostgreSQL core documentation, available at:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/warm-standby.html#streaming-replication

 

 

 

10.1 Limited Support for Cascading Replication

While Failover Manager does not provide full support for cascading replication, it does provide limited support for simple failover in a cascading replication scenario. Cascading replication allows a Standby node to stream to another Standby node, reducing the number of connections (and processing overhead) to the master node.

For detailed information about configuring cascading replication, please see the PostgreSQL documentation at:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/warm-standby.html#cascading-replication

To use Failover Manager in a cascading replication scenario, you should modify the cluster properties file, setting the following property values on Standby Node #2:

promotable=false
auto.reconfigure=false

In the event of a Failover, Standby Node #1 will be promoted to the role of Master node. Should failover occur, Standby Node #2 will continue to act as a read-only replica for the new Master node until you take actions to manually reconfigure the replication scenario to contain 3 nodes.

In the event of a failure of Standby Node #1, you will not have failover protection, but you will receive an email notifying you of the failure of the node.

Please note that performing a switchover and switch back to the original master may not preserve the cascading replication scenario.

11 Appendix B - Configuring SSL Authentication on a Failover Manager Cluster

The following steps enable SSL authentication for Failover Manager. Please note that all connecting clients will be required to use SSL authentication when connecting to any database server within the cluster; you will be required to modify the connection methods currently used by existing clients.

To enable SSL on a Failover Manager cluster, you must:

1.

Place a server.crt and server.key file in the data directory (under your Advanced Server installation). You can purchase a certificate signed by an authority, or create your own self-signed certificate. For information about creating a self-signed certificate, see the PostgreSQL core documentation at:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/ssl-tcp.html#ssl-certificate-creation

2.	Modify the postgresql.conf file on each database within the Failover Manager cluster, enabling SSL:

ssl=on

After modifying the postgresql.conf file, you must restart the server.

3.	Modify the pg_hba.conf file on each node of the Failover Manager cluster, adding the following line to the beginning of the file:

hostnossl all all all reject

The line instructs the server to reject any connections that are not using SSL authentication; this enforces SSL authentication for any connecting clients.  For information about modifying the pg_hba.conf file, see the PostgreSQL core documentation at:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/auth-pg-hba-conf.html

4.	After placing the server.crt and server.key file in the data directory, convert the certificate to a form that Java understands; you can use the command:

openssl x509 -in server.crt -out server.crt.der -outform der

For more information, see:

https://jdbc.postgresql.org/documentation/94/ssl-client.html

5.	Then, add the certificate to the Java trusted certificates file:

keytool -keystore $JAVA_HOME/lib/security/cacerts -alias alias_name -import -file server.crt.der

Where

$JAVA_HOME is the home directory of your Java installation.

alias_name can be any string, but must be unique for each certificate.

You can use the keytool command to review a list of the available certificates or retrieve information about a specific certificate. For more information about using the keytool command, enter:

man keytool

The certificate from each database server must be imported into the trusted certificates file of each agent. Note that the location of the cacerts file may vary on each system. For more information, visit:

https://jdbc.postgresql.org/documentation/94/ssl-client.html

6.	Modify the efm.properties file on each node within the cluster, setting the jdbc.sslmode property.