A successful deployment depends on being mindful during deployment, operations and ongoing maintenance.
Identify the best deployment method for your environment and use that
in production and testing. See
Section 10.1, “Comparing Staging and INI
tpm Methods”.
Standardize the OS and database prerequisites. There are Ansible modules available for immediate use within AWS, or as a template for modifications.
More informatin on the Ansible method is available in this blog article.
For security purposes you should ensure that you secure the following areas of your deployment:
Ensure that you create a unique installation and deployment user, such as tungsten, and set the correct file permissions on installed directories. See Section B.2.3, “Directory Locations and Configuration”.
When using ssh and/or SSL, ensure that the ssh key or certificates are suitably protected. See Section B.2.2.2, “SSH Configuration”.
Use a firewall, such as iptables to protect the network ports that you need to use. The best solution is to ensure that only known hosts can connect to the required ports for Tungsten Cluster. For more information on the network ports required for Tungsten Cluster operation, see Section B.2.2.1, “Network Ports”.
If possible, use authentication and SSL connectivity between hosts to protext your data and authorisation for the tools used in your deployment.
See Chapter 5, Deployment: Security for more information.
Choose your topology from the deployment section and verify the configuration matches the basic settings. Additional settings may be included for custom features but the basics are needed to ensure proper operation. If your configuration is not listed or does not match our documented settings; we cannot guarantee correct operation.
If there are an even number of database servers in the cluster, configure the cluster with a witness host. An active witness is preferred but a passive one will ensure stability. See Section 2.1.4, “Witness Hosts” for an explanation of the differences and how to configure them.
If you are using ROW
replication, any triggers that run additional
INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE
operations must be updated so they do not run on the Replica servers.
Make sure you know the structure of the Tungsten Cluster home directory and how to initialize your environment for administration. See Section 6.1, “The Home Directory” and Section 6.2, “Establishing the Shell Environment”.
Prior to migrating applications to Tungsten Cluster test failover and recovery procedures from Chapter 6, Operations Guide. Be sure to try recovering a failed Primary and reprovisioning failed Replicas.
Setup proper monitoring for all servers as described in Section 6.17, “Monitoring Tungsten Cluster”.
Configure the Tungsten Cluster services to startup and shutdown along with the server. See Section 4.3, “Configuring Startup on Boot”.
Schedule the Section 9.8, “The cluster_backup Command” tool on each database server at least each night. The script will take a backup of at least one server. Skip this step if you have another backup method scheduled that takes consistent snapshots of your server.
Your license allows for a testing cluster. Deploy a cluster that matches your production cluster and test all operations and maintenance operations there.
Schedule regular tests for local and DR failover. This should at least include switching the Primary server to another host in the local cluster. If possible, the DR cluster should be tested once per quarter.
Disable any automatic operating system patching processes. The use of automatic patching will cause issues when all database servers automatically restart without coordination. See Section 6.15.3, “Performing Maintenance on an Entire Dataservice”.
Regularly check for maintenance releases and upgrade your environment. Every version includes stability and usability fixes to ease the administrative process.