The ptor tool is designed to validate the RPO, RTO of a PostgreSQL HA instance. By using this tool, we can put some load into the primary instance, which will get replicated to it's secondary.

While the data loading happens, we can either turn off the primary or it's vm instance to trigger the underlying auto failover system. Once the auto failover happens, ptor tool will evaluate the RPO(Data Loss) and RTO(Recovery Time) of the HA system.

To use ptor tool, we need below two instances.

1. PRIMARY_PGDSN which points to the primary endpoint
2. REPO_PGDSN which makes a copy of the transactions, which parallel workers execute on the PRIMARY_PGDSN. We need this REPO_PGDSN instance, to validate the data after we trigger the failover/switchover.

Quick test performed between the two local instance, where primary and repo instances are in sync streaming replication mode. In this demo, we restarted the local primary instance to mimic the failover/switchover.

All the demos are done with a sync streaming replication between the primary and secondary nodes. All the instances are configured to be in the same network.

Configure PRIMARY_PGDSN as a multi host connection string as like below.

    host=host1,host2 port=5432,5432 user=postgres password=password target_session_attrs=read-write

Demo Ptor pg_auto_failover

Configure PRIMARY_PGDSN as to point the stolon proxy.

Demo Ptor Stolon

Configure PRIMARY_PGDSN as to point the haproxy. Below is the haproxy.cfg used for this demo.

    global
    maxconn 100

    defaults
    log global
    mode tcp
    retries 1
    timeout client 30m
    timeout connect 1s
    timeout server 30m
    timeout check 1s

    listen stats
    mode http
    bind *:2361
    stats enable
    stats uri /

    listen production
    bind 172.31.46.52:2360
    option httpchk OPTIONS/master
    http-check expect status 200
    default-server inter 1s fall 1 rise 1 on-marked-down shutdown-sessions
    server postgresql_192.168.56.104_5432 172.31.34.9:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008
    server postgresql_192.168.56.105_5432 172.31.43.176:5432 maxconn 100 check port 8008

Demo Ptor Patroni, HaProxy

Below are the installation steps, which are prepared on RHEL instance. If you are using debain flavour, then use the platform specific package tools like apt-get or brew to install the below components.

1. Install git

    $ sudo yum install git -y
   

2. Install golang

    $ sudo yum install golang -y
   

3. Install PostgreSQL server (Optional)

    $ sudo yum install postgresql-server -y
   

   This is for the repo server, where we save a copy of primary transactions.

4. Download the copy of ptor source

    $ git clone https://github.com/dineshkumar02/ptor.git
   

5. Build the ptor binary

    $ cd ptor
    $ make