Monitoring replication
Monitoring replication lag is important and there are 3 ways to do this:
- Dashboard - Under the Reports of the dashboard, you can view the replication lag of your project
- Database -
- pg_stat_subscription (subscriber) - if PID is null, then the subscription is not active
- pg_stat_subscription_stats - look here for error_count to see if there were issues applying or syncing (if yes, check the logs for why)
- pg_replication_slots - use this to check if the slot is active and you can also calculate the lag from here
- Metrics - Using the prometheus endpoint for your project
- replication_slots_max_lag_bytes - this is the more important one
- pg_stat_replication_replay_lag - lag to replay WAL files from the source DB on the target DB (throttled by disk or high activity)
- pg_stat_replication_send_lag - lag in sending WAL files from the source DB (a high lag means that the publisher is not being asked to send new WAL files OR a network issues)
Primary
Replication status and lag
The pg_stat_replication table shows the status of any replicas connected to the primary database.
12select pid, application_name, state, sent_lsn, write_lsn, flush_lsn, replay_lsn, sync_statefrom pg_stat_replication;Replication slot status
A replication slot can be in one of three states:
active- The slot is active and is receiving datainactive- The slot is not active and is not receiving datalost- The slot is lost and is not receiving data
The state can be checked using the pg_replication_slots table:
1select slot_name, active, state from pg_replication_slots;WAL size
The WAL size can be checked using the pg_ls_waldir() function:
1select * from pg_ls_waldir();Check LSN
1select pg_current_wal_lsn();Subscriber
Subscription status
The pg_subscription table shows the status of any subscriptions on a replica and the pg_subscription_rel table shows the status of each table within a subscription.
The srsubstate column in pg_subscription_rel can be one of the following:
i- Initializing - The subscription is being initializedd- Data Synchronizing - The subscription is synchronizing data for the first time (i.e. doing the initial copy)s- Synchronized - The subscription is synchronizedr- Replicating - The subscription is replicating data
123456789101112131415161718SELECT sub.subname AS subscription_name, relid::regclass AS table_name, srel.srsubstate AS replication_state, CASE srel.srsubstate WHEN 'i' THEN 'Initializing' WHEN 'd' THEN 'Data Synchronizing' WHEN 's' THEN 'Synchronized' WHEN 'r' THEN 'Replicating' ELSE 'Unknown' END AS state_description, srel.srsyncedlsn AS last_synced_lsnFROM pg_subscription subJOIN pg_subscription_rel srel ON sub.oid = srel.srsubidORDER BY table_name;Check LSN
1select pg_last_wal_replay_lsn();