PGD CLI on BigAnimal
When running a distributed high-availability cluster on BigAnimal, you can use the PGD CLI to manage cluster operations. Examples of these operations include switching over write leaders, performing cluster health checks, and viewing various details about nodes, groups, or other aspects of the cluster.
Installing the PGD CLI
To install the PGD CLI, for Debian and Ubuntu machines, replace <your-token>
with your EDB subscription token in the following command:
For RHEL, Rocky, AlmaLinux, or Oracle Linux machines, make the replacement in this command:
Connecting to your BigAnimal cluster
Discovering your database connection string
To connect to your distributed high-availability BigAnimal cluster using the PGD CLI, you need to discover the database connection string. From your BigAnimal console:
- Log in to the BigAnimal clusters view.
- To show only clusters that work with PGD CLI, in the filter, set Cluster Type to Distributed High Availability.
- Select your cluster.
- In the view of your cluster, select the Connect tab.
- Copy the read/write URI from the connection info. This is your connection string.
Using the PGD CLI with your database connection string
Important
PGD doesn't prompt for interactive passwords. Accordingly, you need a .pgpass
file properly configured to allow access to the cluster. Your BigAnimal cluster's connection information page has all the information needed for the file.
Without a properly configured .pgpass
, you receive a database connection error when using a PGD CLI command, even when using the correct database connection string with the --dsn
flag.
To use the PGD CLI with your database connection string, use the --dsn
flag with your PGD CLI command:
PGD commands in BigAnimal
Note
Three EDB Postgres Distributed CLI commands don't work with distributed high-availability BigAnimal clusters: create-proxy
, delete-proxy
, and alter-proxy-option
. These commands are managed by BigAnimal, as BigAnimal runs on Kubernetes. It's a technical best practice to have the Kubernetes operator handle these functions.
The examples that follow show the most common PGD CLI commands with a BigAnimal cluster.
pgd check-health
pgd check-health
provides statuses with relevant messaging regarding the clock skew of node pairs, node accessibility, the current raft leader, replication slot health, and versioning consistency:
pgd show-nodes
pgd show-nodes
returns all the nodes in the distributed high-availability cluster and their summaries, including name, node id, group, and current/target state:
pgd show-groups
pgd show-groups
returns all groups in your distributed high-availability BigAnimal cluster. It also notes the node that's the current write leader of each group:
pgd switchover
pgd switchover
manually changes the write leader of the group and can be used to simulate a failover.
See the PGD CLI command reference for the full range of PGD CLI commands and their descriptions.