Preparation
Module:
Node
Pigsty supports the Linux kernel and x86_64/amd64 arch, applicable to any node.
A “node” refers to a resource that is SSH accessible and offers a bare OS environment, such as a physical machine, a virtual machine, or an OS container equipped with systemd and sshd.
Deploying Pigsty requires at least 1 node. The minimum spec requirement is 1C1G, but it is recommended to use at least 2C4G, with no upper limit: parameters will automatically optimize and adapt.
For demos, personal sites, devbox, or standalone monitoring infra, 1-2 nodes are recommended, while at least 3 nodes are suggested for an HA PostgreSQL cluster. For critical scenarios, 4-5 nodes are advisable.
Leverage IaC Tools for chores
Managing a large-scale prod env could be tedious and error-prone. We recommend using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools to address these issues.
You can use the Terraform and Vagrant templates provided by Pigsty, to create the required node environment with just one command through IaC, provisioning network, OS image, admin user, privileges, etc…
Network
Pigsty requires nodes to use static IPv4 addresses, which means you should explicitly assign your nodes a specific fixed IP address rather than using DHCP-assigned addresses.
The IP address used by a node should be the primary IP address for internal network communications and will serve as the node’s unique identifier.
If you wish to use the optional Node VIP and PG VIP features, ensure all nodes are located within an L2 network.
Your firewall policy should ensure the required ports are open between nodes. For a detailed list of ports required by different modules, refer to Node: Ports.
Which Ports Should Be Exposed?
For beginners or those who are just trying it out, you can just open ports 5432 (PostgreSQL database) and 3000 (Grafana visualization interface) to the world.
For a serious prod env, you should only expose the necessary ports to the exterior, such as 80/443 for web services, open to the office network (or the entire Internet).
Exposing database service ports directly to the Internet is not advisable. If you need to do this, consider consulting Security Best Practices and proceed cautiously.
The method for exposing ports depends on your network implementation, such as security group policies, local iptables records, firewall configurations, etc.
Operating System
Pigsty supports various Linux OS. We recommend using RockyLinux 8.9 or Ubuntu 22.04.3 as the default OS for installing Pigsty.
Pigsty supports RHEL (7,8,9), Debian (11,12), Ubuntu (20,22), and many other compatible OS distros. Check Compatibility For a complete list of compatible OS distros.
When deploying on multiple nodes, we strongly recommend using the same version of the OS distro and the Linux kernel on all nodes.
We strongly recommend using a clean, minimally installed OS environment with en_US set as the primary language.
How to enable en_US locale?
To ensure the en_US locale is available when using other primary language:
yum install -y glibc-locale-source glibc-langpack-en
localedef -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8
localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
Note: The PostgreSQL cluster deployed by Pigsty defaults to the C.UTF8 locale, but character set definitions use en_US to ensure the pg_trgm extension functions properly.
If you do not need this feature, you can configure the value of pg_lc_ctype to C.UTF8 to avoid this issue when en locale is missing.
Admin User
You’ll need an “admin user” on all nodes where Pigsty is meant to be deployed — an OS user with nopass ssh login and nopass sudo permissions.
On the nodes where Pigsty is installed, you need an “administrative user” who has nopass ssh login and nopass sudo permissions.
No password sudo is required to execute commands during the installation process, such as installing packages, configuring system settings, etc.
How to configure nopass sudo for admin user?
Assuming your admin username is vagrant, you can create a file in /etc/sudoers.d/vagrant and add the following content:
%vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
This will allow the vagrant user to execute all commands without a sudo password. If your username is not vagrant, replace vagrant in the above steps with your username.
Avoid using the root user
While it is possible to install Pigsty using the root user, we do not recommend it.
We recommend using a dedicated admin user, such as dba, different from the root user (root) and the database superuser (postgres).
There is a dedicated playbook subtask that can use an existing admin user (e.g., root) with ssh/sudo password input to create a dedicated admin user.
SSH Permission
In addition to nopass sudo privilege, Pigsty also requires the admin user to have nopass ssh login privilege (login via ssh key).
For single-host installations setup, this means the admin user on the local node should be able to log in to the host itself via ssh without a password.
If your Pigsty deployment involves multiple nodes, this means the admin user on the admin node should be able to log in to all nodes managed by Pigsty (including the local node) via ssh without a password, and execute sudo commands without a password as well.
During the configure procedure, if your current admin user does not have any SSH key, it will attempt to address this issue by generating a new id_rsa key pair and adding it to the local ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file to ensure local SSH login capability for the local admin user.
By default, Pigsty creates an admin user dba (uid=88) on all managed nodes. If you are already using this user, we recommend that you change the node_admin_username to a new username with a different uid, or disable it using the node_admin_enabled parameter.
How to configure nopass SSH login for admin user?
Assuming your admin username is vagrant, execute the following command as the vagrant user will generate a public/private key pair for login. If a key pair already exists, there is no need to generate a new one.
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -N '' -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -q
The generated public key is by default located at: /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, and the private key at: /home/vagrant/.ssh/id_rsa. If your OS username is not vagrant, replace vagrant in the above commands with your username.
You should append the public key file (id_rsa.pub) to the authorized_keys file of the user you need to log into: /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys. If you already have password access to the remote machine, you can use ssh-copy-id to copy the public key:
ssh-copy-id <ip> # Enter password to complete public key copying
sshpass -p <password> ssh-copy-id <ip> # Or: you can embed the password directly in the command to avoid interactive password entry (cautious!)
Pigsty recommends provisioning the admin user during node provisioning and making it viable by default.
SSH Accessibility
If your environment has some restrictions on SSH access, such as a bastion server or ad hoc firewall rules that prevent simple SSH access via ssh <ip>, consider using SSH aliases.
For example, if there’s a node with IP 10.10.10.10 that can not be accessed directly via ssh but can be accessed via an ssh alias meta defined in ~/.ssh/config,
then you can configure the ansible_host parameter for that node in the inventory to specify the SSH Alias on the host level:
nodes:
hosts: # 10.10.10.10 can not be accessed directly via ssh, but can be accessed via ssh alias 'meta'
10.10.10.10: { ansible_host: meta }
If the ssh alias does not meet your requirement, there are a plethora of custom ssh connection parameters that can bring fine-grained control over SSH connection behavior.
If the following cmd can be successfully executed on the admin node by the admin user, it means that the target node’s admin user is properly configured.
ssh <ip|alias> 'sudo ls'
Software
On the admin node, Pigsty requires ansible to initiate control.
If you are using the singleton meta installation, Ansible is required on this node. It is not required for common nodes.
The bootstrap procedure will make every effort to do this for you.
But you can always choose to install Ansible manually. The process of manually installing Ansible varies with different OS distros / major versions (usually involving an additional weak dependency jmespath):
sudo dnf install -y ansible python3.11-jmespathsudo yum install -y ansible # EL7 does not need to install jmespath explicitlysudo apt install -y ansible python3-jmespathbrew install ansibleTo install Pigsty, you also need to prepare the Pigsty source package. You can directly download a specific version from the GitHub Release page or use the following command to obtain the latest stable version:
curl -L https://get.pigsty.cc/install | bash
If your env does not have Internet access, consider using the offline packages, which are pre-packed for different OS distros, and can be downloaded from the GitHub Release page.
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