---
title: "Replica imaging and bootstrap"
linkTitle: "Replica Bootstrap"
weight: 60
icon: fa-solid fa-boxes-stacked
description: "Replica imaging, bootstrap, and custom replica creation workflows."
module: [PATRONI]
categories: [Task]
aliases: [/patroni/replica_bootstrap/]
upstream_link: "https://patroni.readthedocs.io/en/latest/replica_bootstrap.html"
---

<a id="replica_imaging_and_bootstrap"></a>
Patroni allows customizing creation of a new replica. It also supports defining what happens when the new empty cluster is being bootstrapped. The distinction between two is well defined: Patroni creates replicas only if the `initialize` key is present in DCS for the cluster. If there is no `initialize` key - Patroni calls bootstrap exclusively on the first node that takes the initialize key lock.

<a id="custom_bootstrap"></a>

--------

## Bootstrap

PostgreSQL provides `initdb` command to initialize a new cluster and Patroni calls it by default. In certain cases, particularly when creating a new cluster as a copy of an existing one, it is necessary to replace a built-in method with custom actions. Patroni supports executing user-defined scripts to bootstrap new clusters, supplying some required arguments to them, i.e. the name of the cluster and the path to the data directory. This is configured in the `bootstrap` section of the Patroni configuration. For example:

```yaml
bootstrap:
    method: <custom_bootstrap_method_name>
    <custom_bootstrap_method_name>:
        command: <path_to_custom_bootstrap_script> [param1 [, ...]]
        keep_existing_recovery_conf: False
        no_params: False
        recovery_conf:
            recovery_target_action: promote
            recovery_target_timeline: latest
            restore_command: <method_specific_restore_command>
```

Each bootstrap method must define at least a `name` and a `command`. A special `initdb` method is available to trigger the default behavior, in which case `method` parameter can be omitted altogether. The `command` can be specified using either an absolute path, or the one relative to the `patroni` command location. In addition to the fixed parameters defined in the configuration files, Patroni supplies two cluster-specific ones:

`--scope`  
Name of the cluster to be bootstrapped

`--datadir`  
Path to the data directory of the cluster instance to be bootstrapped

Passing these two additional flags can be disabled by setting a special `no_params` parameter to `True`.

If the bootstrap script returns `0`, Patroni tries to configure and start the PostgreSQL instance produced by it. If any of the intermediate steps fail, or the script returns a non-zero value, Patroni assumes that the bootstrap has failed, cleans up after itself and releases the initialize lock to give another node the opportunity to bootstrap.

If a `recovery_conf` block is defined in the same section as the custom bootstrap method, Patroni will generate a `recovery.conf` before starting the newly bootstrapped instance (or set the recovery settings on Postgres configuration if running PostgreSQL \>= 12). Typically, such recovery configuration should contain at least one of the `recovery_target_*` parameters, together with the `recovery_target_action` set to `promote`.

If `keep_existing_recovery_conf` is defined and set to `True`, Patroni will not remove the existing `recovery.conf` file if it exists (PostgreSQL \<= 11). Similarly, in that case Patroni will not remove the existing `recovery.signal` or `standby.signal` if either exists, nor will it override the configured recovery settings (PostgreSQL \>= 12). This is useful when bootstrapping from a backup with tools like pgBackRest that generate the appropriate recovery configuration for you.

Besides that, any additional key/value pairs informed in the custom bootstrap method configuration will be passed as arguments to `command` in the format `--name=value`. For example:

```yaml
bootstrap:
    method: <custom_bootstrap_method_name>
    <custom_bootstrap_method_name>:
        command: <path_to_custom_bootstrap_script>
        arg1: value1
        arg2: value2
```

Makes the configured `command` to be called additionally with `--arg1=value1 --arg2=value2` command-line arguments.

> > [!NOTE]
> > Bootstrap methods are neither chained, nor fallen-back to the default one in case the primary one fails

As an example, you are able to bootstrap a fresh Patroni cluster from a Barman backup with a configuration like this:

```yaml
bootstrap:
    method: barman
    barman:
        keep_existing_recovery_conf: true
        command: patroni_barman --api-url https://barman-host:7480 recover
        barman-server: my_server
        ssh-command: ssh postgres@patroni-host
```

> [!NOTE]
> `patroni_barman recover` requires that you have both Barman and `pg-backup-api` configured in the Barman host, so it can execute a remote `barman recover` through the backup API. The above example uses a subset of the available parameters. You can get more information running `patroni_barman recover --help`.

<a id="custom_replica_creation"></a>

--------

## Building replicas

Patroni uses tried and proven `pg_basebackup` in order to create new replicas. One downside of it is that it requires a running leader node. Another one is the lack of 'on-the-fly' compression for the backup data and no built-in cleanup for outdated backup files. Some people prefer other backup solutions, such as `WAL-E`, `pgBackRest`, `Barman` and others, or simply roll their own scripts. In order to accommodate all those use-cases Patroni supports running custom scripts to clone a new replica. Those are configured in the `postgresql` configuration block:

```yaml
postgresql:
    create_replica_methods:
        - <method name>
    <method name>:
        command: <command name>
        keep_data: True
        no_params: True
        no_leader: 1
```

example: wal_e

```yaml
postgresql:
    create_replica_methods:
        - wal_e
        - basebackup
    wal_e:
        command: patroni_wale_restore
        no_leader: 1
        envdir: '{{WALE_ENV_DIR}}'
        use_iam: 1
    basebackup:
        max-rate: '100M'
```

example: pgbackrest

```yaml
postgresql:
    create_replica_methods:
        - pgbackrest
        - basebackup
    pgbackrest:
        command: /usr/bin/pgbackrest --stanza=<scope> --delta restore
        keep_data: True
        no_params: True
    basebackup:
        max-rate: '100M'
```

example: Barman

```yaml
postgresql:
    create_replica_methods:
        - barman
        - basebackup
    barman:
        command: patroni_barman --api-url https://barman-host:7480 recover
        barman-server: my_server
        ssh-command: ssh postgres@patroni-host
    basebackup:
        max-rate: '100M'
```

> [!NOTE]
> `patroni_barman recover` requires that you have both Barman and `pg-backup-api` configured in the Barman host, so it can execute a remote `barman recover` through the backup API. The above example uses a subset of the available parameters. You can get more information running `patroni_barman recover --help`.

The `create_replica_methods` defines available replica creation methods and the order of executing them. Patroni will stop on the first one that returns 0. Each method should define a separate section in the configuration file, listing the command to execute and any custom parameters that should be passed to that command. All parameters will be passed in a `--name=value` format. Besides user-defined parameters, Patroni supplies a couple of cluster-specific ones:

`--scope`  
Which cluster this replica belongs to

`--datadir`  
Path to the data directory of the replica

`--role`  
Always 'replica'

`--connstring`  
Connection string to connect to the cluster member to clone from (primary or other replica). The user in the connection string can execute SQL and replication protocol commands.

A special `no_leader` parameter, if defined, allows Patroni to call the replica creation method even if there is no running leader or replicas. In that case, an empty string will be passed in a connection string. This is useful for restoring the formerly running cluster from the binary backup.

A special `keep_data` parameter, if defined, will instruct Patroni to not clean PGDATA folder before calling restore.

A special `no_params` parameter, if defined, restricts passing parameters to custom command.

A `basebackup` method is a special case: it will be used if `create_replica_methods` is empty, although it is possible to list it explicitly among the `create_replica_methods` methods. This method initializes a new replica with the `pg_basebackup`, the base backup is taken from the leader unless there are replicas with `clonefrom` tag, in which case one of such replicas will be used as the origin for pg_basebackup. It works without any configuration; however, it is possible to specify a `basebackup` configuration section. Same rules as with the other method configuration apply, namely, only long (with --) options should be specified there. Not all parameters make sense, if you override a connection string or provide an option to created tar-ed or compressed base backups, patroni won't be able to make a replica out of it. There is no validation performed on the names or values of the parameters passed to the `basebackup` section. Also note that in case symlinks are used for the WAL folder it is up to the user to specify the correct `--waldir` path as an option, so that after replica buildup or re-initialization the symlink would persist. This option is supported only since v10 though.

You can specify basebackup parameters as either a map (key-value pairs) or a list of elements, where each element could be either a key-value pair or a single key (for options that does not receive any values, for instance, `--verbose`). Consider those 2 examples:

```yaml
postgresql:
    basebackup:
        max-rate: '100M'
        checkpoint: 'fast'
```

and

```yaml
postgresql:
    basebackup:
        - verbose
        - max-rate: '100M'
        - waldir: /pg-wal-mount/external-waldir
```

If all replica creation methods fail, Patroni will try again all methods in order during the next event loop cycle.