Remote setup

Before version 4, all the performance data collected were stored locally. This had two majors drawbacks:

  • it adds a non negligeable performance cost, both when collecting data and when using the user interface
  • it’s not possible to collect data on hot-standby servers

With version 4, it’s now possible to store the data of one or multiples servers on an external PostgreSQL database. This chapter describes how to configure such remote mode.

What did not change

Only the storage part changed. Therefore, it’s still mandatory to configure at least pg_stat_statements on each PostgreSQL instance, and all the other Stats Extensions you want to use. The list of extension can of course be different on each instance.

Setup the main repository database

A PostgreSQL 9.4 or upward is required. Ideally, you should setup a dedicated instance for storing the PoWA performance data, especially if you want to setup more than a few remote servers.

You need to setup a dedicated database and install the latest version of PoWA archivist. The Installation and background worker configuration documentation will explain in detail how to do so.

However, please note that if you don’t want to gather performance data for the repository PostgreSQL server, the shared_preload_libraries configuration and instance restart is not required anymore.

Configure PoWA and stats extensions on each remote server

You need to configure PoWA archivist and the Stats Extensions of your choice on each remote PostgreSQL server.

Declare the list of remote servers and their extensions

PoWA archivist provides some SQL functions for that.

You most likely want to declare a remote sever using the powa_register_server function. For instance:

SELECT powa_register_server(hostname => 'myserver.domain.com',
    alias => 'myserver',
    password => 'mypassword',
    extensions => '{pg_stat_kcache,pg_qualstats,pg_wait_sampling}');

You can consult the Remote servers configuration page for a full documentation of the available SQL API.

Configure powa-collector

Do all the required configuration as documented in PoWA-collector.

Then you can check that everything is working by simply launching the collector. For instance:

./powa-collector.py

Warning

It’s highly recommended to configure powa-collector as a daemon, with any facility provided by your operating system, once the initial setup and testing is finished.

Gathering of remote data will start, as described by previous configuration.

Configure the User Interface

You can follow the PoWA-web documentation. Obviously, in case of remote setup you only need to configure a single connection information per PoWA remote repository.

Once all those steps are finished, you should have a working remote setup for PoWA!