Release notes for repmgr 2.0 RC1: repmgr - Replication Manager for PostgreSQL clusters

repmgr 2.0 RC1 released

What is repmgr?

repmgr is a set of open source tools that helps DBAs and System administrators manage a cluster of PostgreSQL databases.

By taking advantage of the Hot Standby capability introduced in PostgreSQL 9, repmgr greatly simplifies the process of setting up and managing database with high availability and scalability requirements.

repmgr simplifies administration and daily management, enhances productivity and reduces the overall costs of a PostgreSQL cluster by:

monitoring the replication process;
allowing DBAs to issue high availability operations such as switch-overs and fail-overs

This release introduces a new feature, autofailover. With autofailover repmgr is able to automatically promote a standby and let the other standbys follow the new master, without interaction of the DBA. It also adds a lot of bug fixes and several new features.

Features

Improved Documentation
General refactoring, code quality improvements and stabilization work
Support for daemonizing (-d/--daemonize)
PID file handling (-p/--pid-file)
New config option: monitor_interval_secs
New config option: retry_promote_interval
New config option: logfile
New config option: pg_bindir
New config option: pgctl_options
Add timestamps to log line in stderr
Add a ssh_options parameter
Make CLONE command try to make an exact copy including $PGDATA location
Add detection of master failure
Add the notion of a witness server
Add experimental autofailover capabilities
Add a configuration parameter to indicate the script to execute on failover or follow
Make the monitoring optional and turned off by default, it can be turned on with --monitoring-history switch
Add tunables to specify number of retries to reconnect to master and the time between them

Bugfixes

Ignore pg_log when cloning
Correctly check wal_keep_segments
General code refactoring
Log format fixes
handle stdin>/stdout/stderr for repmgrd
Added format checking for printf() like functions
Added forgotten priority value when creating a witness
pg_config is now setable from outsite of the makefile
Split install targets to install_prog and install_ext with doing both as the default
Flush output before calling system()
Initialize variables as sscanf() leaves them untouched upon error
No longer exit when standby connection drops
Several typos have been corrected
Fixed string comparison when reloading config files
Do not create data directory before sanity checks succeeded when creating a witness
Also check if query was successful when registering a new standby
Remove master node earlier so that master register --force succeeds when it is already registered
Do not exit with database in backup mode (pg_start_backup())
Debian control file now accepts PostgreSQL 9.0, 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3
Now compiles with 9.3

Upcoming

Features we are working on in the near future:

timeline increase when a standby gets promoted
A better check which standby did receive most of the data
Make the fact that a standby may be delayed a factor in the voting algorithm
include support for delayed standbys

Community and development

repmgr is free and open source software and is licensed under the GPLv3.