Replication is the ability to create copies of a Cloud SQL instance or an on-premises database, and offload work to the copies.
IntroductionThe primary reason for using replication is to scale the use of data in a database without degrading performance.
Other reasons include:
Additionally, a replica could be promoted if the original instance becomes corrupted.
When referring to a Cloud SQL instance, the instance that is replicated is called the primary instance and the copies are called read replicas. The primary instance and read replicas reside in Cloud SQL.
When referring to an on-premises database, the replication scenario is called replicating from an external server. In this scenario, the database that is replicated is the source database server. The copies that reside in Cloud SQL are called Cloud SQL replicas. There is also an instance that represents the source database server in Cloud SQL called the source representation instance.
In a disaster recovery scenario, you can promote a replica to convert it to a primary instance. This way, you can use it in place of an instance that's in a region that's having an outage. You can also promote a replica to replace an instance that's corrupted.
Cloud SQL supports the following types of replicas:
By using connector enforcement, you can enforce using only the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy or Cloud SQL Language Connectors to connect to Cloud SQL instances. With connector enforcement, Cloud SQL rejects direct connections to the database. You can't create read replicas for an instance that has connector enforcement enabled. Similarly, if an instance has read replicas, then you can't enable connector enforcement for the instance.
This limitation doesn't apply to the instances that have private service access configured.You can also use
Database Migration Servicefor continuous replication from a source database server to Cloud SQL. Note: Cloud SQL allows users to manage their own replication using PostgreSQL's
logical replicationfeatures.
Cloud SQL doesn't support replication between two external servers.
Read replicasYou use a read replica to offload work from a Cloud SQL instance. The read replica is an exact copy of the primary instance. Data and other changes on the primary instance are updated in almost real time on the read replica.
Read replicas are read-only; you cannot write to them. The read replica processes queries, read requests, and analytics traffic, thus reducing the load on the primary instance.
Note: We recommend that you limit the number of direct read replicas of your primary instance to 10 or fewer. If you need additional replicas, then you can create cascading read replicas.You connect to a replica directly using its connection name and IP address. If you're connecting to a replica using a private IP address, you don't need to create an additional VPC private connection for the replica because the connection is inherited from the primary instance.
For information about how to create a read replica, see Creating read replicas. For information about managing a read replica, see Managing read replicas.
Note: Read replicas don't provide failover capability. To provide failover capability for an instance, see Configuring an instance for high availability.As a best practice, put read replicas in a different zone than the primary instance when you use HA on your primary instance. This practice ensures that read replicas continue to operate when the zone that contains the primary instance has an outage. See the Overview of high availability for more information.
Selecting an appropriate machine typeRead replicas can have a different number of vCPUs and memory from that of the primary. You should monitor metrics on your instance such as CPU and memory usage to ensure that the replica instance is sized correctly for its workload, especially if it is smaller than the primary instance. A replica instance that is undersized is more prone to poor performance, such as frequent out-of-memory (OOM) events.
Storage capacity on read replicasWhen a primary instance is resized, all of its read replicas are resized, if needed, so that they have at least as much storage capacity as the updated primary instance.
Impact on themax_connections
flag when the read replica has a machine type with less memory than the primary
On a PostgreSQL instance, if you don't set the max_connections
flag to a value of your choice, Cloud SQL automatically sets it based on the amount of memory on the instance. For more information, see supported flags. PostgreSQL requires that the value of max_connections
is always at least as large on a read replica as it is on its primary. Therefore, if a read replica has less memory than its primary, and you haven't set the max_connections
flag, it might inherit a larger value of max_connections
based on the size of the primary instance. In this situation, if you rely on the max_connections
setting to limit the number of connections to the replica instance, it could become overloaded because the value is too high relative to the machine type of the instance. To avoid this, you can do any of the following:
max_connections
.max_connections
flag on the primary and the replica to an appropriate value.Hash index operations don't use write-ahead-logging for PostgreSQL 9.6. Cloud SQL has only one available version under PostgreSQL 10. This is documented in the yellow caution box on the PostgreSQL release page. This also applies to Cloud SQL read replicas.
Because hash index updates don't propagate to the read replica under PostgreSQL 9.6, they can't be used by the replica. As a workaround, you can either refrain from having read replicas or upgrade to a major PostgreSQL version (10 or above).
Cross-region read replicasCross-region replication lets you create a read replica in a different region from the primary instance. You create a cross-region read replica the same way as you create an in-region replica.
Cross-region replicas:
See Promoting replicas for regional migration or disaster recovery for more information about cross-region replicas.
Cascading read replicasCascading replication lets you create a read replica under another read replica in the same or a different region. The following scenarios are use cases for using cascading replicas:
Cascading replicas let you add read replicas to any existing replicas. You can add up to four levels of replicas, including the primary instance. When you promote the replica at the top of a cascading replica hierarchy, it becomes a primary instance and its cascading replicas continue to replicate.
To plan your configuration, you need to have a goal for what the read replicas intend to do. The next two sections describe the configurations for disaster recovery and multi-region replication.
Disaster recoveryTo understand how cascading replicas help you recover quickly during an outage, consider the following replication scenario:
Configuration Outage PromotionIf you want to use an instance in Region B in a disaster recovery configuration and have:
You can create read replicas under the cascading replica in Region B.
On the Outage tab, if there's an outage in Region A, the cascading replica is promoted to a primary instance. It already has read replicas underneath it, reducing the recovery time objective (RTO).
On the Promote tab, you see that when a cascading replica is promoted, its replicas are also promoted and continue to replicate under it.
Multi-region replicationAnother use case for cascading replicas is to distribute read capacity to a second region in a cost-efficient manner. Cascading replicas C and D can be created that replicate from Replica B. Clients can distribute read queries across replicas B, C, and D to reduce the load on each replica. The cost of cross-region network traffic is incurred only once, from the primary instance to Replica B. Replication from B to C and D uses in-region network transfer, which is free.
You can create a hierarchy of up to four instances using cascading replicas for multi-region replication:
Primary A → Replica B → Replica C and Replica D
RestrictionsCloud SQL lets you configure your own replication solutions by using PostgreSQL's logical replication features. Logical replication is a flexible solution allowing:
For more information, see Setting up logical replication. That page includes information about:
The following use cases apply for each type of replication.
Billingstop
a replica. You can restart
, delete
, or disable replication
on it, but you cannot stop it as you can a primary instance. Upgrading a replica Read replicas can experience a disruptive upgrade at any time. User tables You cannot make changes on the replica. All user changes must be done on the primary instance. What's next
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