Provisioning, deploying, and testing ==================================== Provision --------- .. note:: TPA now runs the `provision` command as part of the `deploy` command. The `provision` command is still available for use, but you don't need to run it separately. The `tpaexec provision` command creates instances and other resources required by the cluster. The details of the process depend on the architecture (for example, PGD-Always-ON) and platform (for example, AWS) that you selected while configuring the cluster. For example, given AWS access with the necessary privileges, TPA provisions EC2 instances, VPCs, subnets, routing tables, internet gateways, security groups, EBS volumes, elastic IPs, and so on. You can also provision existing servers by selecting the ``bare`` platform and providing connection details. Whether these are bare metal servers or those provisioned separately on a cloud platform, you can use them as if they were created by TPA. You aren’t restricted to a single platform. You can spread your cluster out across some AWS instances in multiple regions and some on-premises servers or servers in other data centres, as needed. At the end of the provisioning stage, you will have the required number of instances with the basic operating system installed, which TPA can access using SSH (with sudo to root). Deploy ------ The ``tpaexec deploy`` command installs and configures Postgres and other software on the provisioned servers. This includes setting up replication, backups, and so on. TPA can create the servers, but it doesn’t matter who created them so long as SSH and sudo access are available. At the end of the deployment stage, EDB Postgres Distributed is up and running. Test ---- The ``tpaexec test`` command executes various architecture and platform-specific tests against the deployed cluster to ensure that it’s working as expected. At the end of the testing stage, you have a fully functioning cluster. For more information, see `Trusted Postgres Architect `_ .