How to Add Standby Nodes to PostgreSQL Database Clusters

PostgreSQL is an open source, object-relational database built with a focus on extensibility, data integrity, and speed. Its concurrency support makes it fully ACID-compliant, and it supports dynamic loading and catalog-driven operations to let users customize its data types, functions, and more.

In a database cluster, standby nodes maintain a copy of the primary node. If the primary node fails, a standby node is automatically promoted to replace it.

Clusters can have up to two standby nodes. At least one standby nodes is necessary for a high availability cluster configuration.

Note

Standby nodes differ from read-only nodes, which provide geographically distinct horizontal read scaling.

You can add standby nodes during cluster creation in the cluster configuration section of the create page.

You can also add standby nodes to an existing database cluster. From the Databases page, click the name of the cluster to go to its Overview page, then click the Settings tab.

On the Settings page, in the Cluster configuration section, click Edit. Open the Standby Nodes dropdown and choose the number of standby nodes.

Note

Due to the memory requirements of replication, standby nodes are only supported for plans with 2GB of RAM or more.

When you’re done, click Save to immediately provision the standby nodes. The time to complete varies depending on the size of the primary node and its data, but we recommend allowing at least 5 minutes.