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User Guide (pgElephant Suite)

Comprehensive guides for using pgraft in production, as part of the unified pgElephant high-availability suite. All documentation and product pages share a consistent, professional template and feature matrix.

Overview

This section contains detailed documentation for operating pgraft clusters, from basic configuration to advanced cluster operations. For related products, see RAM, RALE, and FauxDB.

Contents

  • Complete Tutorial — Step-by-step guide covering installation, configuration, and advanced usage scenarios
  • Configuration Guide — Complete reference of all configuration parameters and tuning guidelines
  • SQL Functions — Comprehensive reference for all SQL functions provided by pgraft
  • Cluster Operations — Learn how to add/remove nodes, handle elections, and perform maintenance

Common Tasks: - Initialize a node: SELECT pgraft_init(); - Check if leader: SELECT pgraft_is_leader(); - Add a node: SELECT pgraft_add_node(node_id, address, port); - Get cluster status: SELECT * FROM pgraft_get_cluster_status(); - View all nodes: SELECT * FROM pgraft_get_nodes();

Key Configuration Parameters: - pgraft.cluster_id — Cluster identifier (must match on all nodes) - pgraft.node_id — Unique node identifier - pgraft.address — Node listen address - pgraft.port — Raft communication port - pgraft.election_timeout — Election timeout in milliseconds

Common Patterns:

Three-node cluster setup: 

-- On each node
CREATE EXTENSION pgraft;
SELECT pgraft_init();

-- On leader (after 10 seconds)
SELECT pgraft_add_node(2, '192.168.1.12', 7002);
SELECT pgraft_add_node(3, '192.168.1.13', 7003);

Health check: 

SELECT 
    pgraft_is_leader() as is_leader,
    pgraft_get_term() as term,
    pgraft_get_leader() as leader_id,
    pgraft_get_worker_state() as worker;

Best Practices

  1. Use odd number of nodes (3, 5, or 7) for optimal fault tolerance
  2. Always add nodes from the leader — Configuration replicates automatically
  3. Monitor continuously — Track leader, term, and worker status
  4. Test failover scenarios before going to production
  5. Use fast storage — SSD or NVMe recommended

Next Steps