Prepare Resources for Serious Deployment

Pigsty runs on nodes (physical machines or VMs). This document covers the planning and preparation required for deployment.

Node

Pigsty currently runs on Linux kernel with x86_64 / aarch64 architecture. A “node” refers to an SSH accessible resource that provides a bare Linux OS environment. It can be a physical machine, virtual machine, or a systemd-enabled container equipped with systemd, sudo, and sshd.

Deploying Pigsty requires at least 1 node. You can prepare more and deploy everything in one pass via playbooks, or add nodes later. The minimum spec requirement is 1C1G, but at least 1C2G is recommended. Higher is better—no upper limit. Parameters are auto-tuned based on available resources.

The number of nodes you need depends on your requirements. See Architecture Planning for details. Although a single-node deployment with external backup provides reasonable recovery guarantees, we recommend multiple nodes for production. A functioning HA setup requires at least 3 nodes; 2 nodes provide Semi-HA.

Disk

Pigsty uses /data as the default data directory. If you have a dedicated data disk, mount it there. Use /data1, /data2, /dataN for additional disk drives.

To use a different data directory, configure these parameters:

Filesystem

You can use any supported Linux filesystem for data disks. For production, we recommend xfs.

xfs is a Linux standard with excellent performance and CoW capabilities for instant large database cluster cloning. MinIO requires xfs. ext4 is another viable option with a richer data recovery tool ecosystem, but lacks CoW. zfs provides RAID and snapshot features but with significant performance overhead and requires separate installation.

Choose among these three based on your needs. Avoid NFS for database services.

Pigsty assumes /data is owned by root:root with 755 permissions. Admins can assign ownership for first-level directories; each application runs with a dedicated user in its subdirectory. See FHS for the directory structure reference.

Network

Pigsty defaults to online installation mode, requiring outbound Internet access. Offline installation eliminates the Internet requirement.

Internally, Pigsty requires a static network. Assign a fixed IPv4 address to each node.

The IP address serves as the node’s unique identifier—the primary IP bound to the main network interface for internal communications.

For single-node deployment without a fixed IP, use the loopback address 127.0.0.1 as a workaround.

VIP

Pigsty supports optional L2 VIP for NODE clusters (keepalived) and PGSQL clusters (vip-manager).

To use L2 VIP, you must explicitly assign an L2 VIP address for each node/database cluster. This is straightforward on your own hardware but may be challenging in public cloud environments.

CA

Pigsty generates a self-signed CA infrastructure for each deployment, issuing all encryption certificates.

If you have an existing enterprise CA or self-signed CA, you can use it to issue the certificates Pigsty requires.

Domain

Pigsty uses a local static domain i.pigsty by default for WebUI access. This is optional—IP addresses work too.

For production, domain names are recommended to enable HTTPS and encrypted data transmission. Domains also allow multiple services on the same port, differentiated by domain name.

For Internet-facing deployments, use public DNS providers (Cloudflare, AWS Route53, etc.) to manage resolution. Point your domain to the Pigsty node’s public IP address. For LAN/office network deployments, use internal DNS servers with the node’s internal IP address.

For local-only access, add the following to /etc/hosts on machines accessing the Pigsty WebUI:

10.10.10.10 i.pigsty    # Replace with your domain and Pigsty node IP

Linux

Pigsty runs on Linux. It supports 14 mainstream distributions: Compatible OS List

We recommend RockyLinux 10.0, Debian 13.2, or Ubuntu 24.04.2 as default options.

On macOS and Windows, use VM software or Docker systemd images to run Pigsty.

We strongly recommend a fresh OS installation. If your server already runs Nginx, PostgreSQL, or similar services, consider deploying on new nodes.

Locale

We recommend setting en_US as the primary OS language, or at minimum ensuring this locale is available, so PostgreSQL logs are in English.

Some distributions (e.g., Debian) may not provide the en_US locale by default. Enable it with:

localedef -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8
localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

For PostgreSQL, we strongly recommend using the built-in C.UTF-8 collation (PG 17+) as the default.

The configuration wizard automatically sets C.UTF-8 as the collation when PG version and OS support are detected.

Ansible

Pigsty uses Ansible to control all managed nodes from the admin node. See Installing Ansible for details.

Pigsty installs Ansible on Infra nodes by default, making them usable as admin nodes (or backup admin nodes). For single-node deployment, the installation node serves as both the admin node running Ansible and the INFRA node hosting infrastructure.

Pigsty

You can install the latest stable Pigsty source with:

curl -fsSL https://repo.pigsty.io/get | bash;         # International
curl -fsSL https://repo.pigsty.cc/get | bash;         # China Mirror

To install a specific version, use the -s <version> parameter:

curl -fsSL https://repo.pigsty.io/get | bash -s v4.0.0
curl -fsSL https://repo.pigsty.cc/get | bash -s v4.0.0

To install the latest beta version:

curl -fsSL https://repo.pigsty.io/beta | bash;
curl -fsSL https://repo.pigsty.cc/beta | bash;

For developers or the latest development version, clone the repository directly:

git clone https://github.com/pgsty/pigsty.git;
cd pigsty; git checkout v4.0.0

If your environment lacks Internet access, download the source tarball from GitHub Releases or the Pigsty repository:

wget https://repo.pigsty.io/src/pigsty-v4.0.0.tgz
wget https://repo.pigsty.cc/src/pigsty-v4.0.0.tgz