High Availability and Load Balancing

EnhancedAdvanced

Multiple instances of Posit Package Manager can share the same data in a load balanced configuration to help achieve high availability (HA).

HA Checklist

Follow the checklist below to configure multiple Package Manager instances for HA:

  1. Ensure that all node clocks are synchronized - see the HA Time Synchronization Requirements section.
  2. Ensure that all server configurations (i.e. contents of the /etc/rstudio-pm directory) are identical.
  3. Install and configure the same version of Package Manager on each node.
  4. Migrate to a PostgreSQL database (if running SQLite); refer to the Changing the Database Provider section for steps. All nodes in the cluster must use the same PostgreSQL database.
  5. When using NFS for shared storage, configure each server’s Server.DataDir via Storage Data to point to the same shared location. Be sure to read the HA Shared Directory section for additional information on the recommended settings for the shared directory. For more granular control of data directories, reference the Storage Classes appendix for information on customizing the locations of each storage class.

HA Time Synchronization Requirements

The clocks on all nodes in a HA configuration must be synchronized. We recommend configuring NTP for clock synchronization.

HA Limitations

Node Management

Package Manager nodes in a HA configuration are not self-aware of HA. The load-balancing responsibility is fully assumed by your load balancer, and the load balancer is responsible for directing requests to specific nodes and checking whether nodes are available to accept requests.

The CLI provides limited node management capabilities. Refer to Managing Cluster Nodes for more details.

Database Requirements

Package Manager only supports HA when using a PostgreSQL database. If you are using SQLite, please switch to PostgreSQL. Reference the Changing the Database Provider section for more information.

Shared Data Directory Requirements

Package Manager manages repository content within the server’s data and variable data directories. These directories must be at shared locations, and each node must be configured to point to the same shared locations. Refer to the File Storage section for more information on the server’s data directories.

Package Manager supports using either NFS or AWS S3 storage for shared data directories. You can also use a combination of both NFS and AWS S3 for different storage classes.

NFS

We recommend and support NFS version 3 or 4 for file sharing.

Package Manager relies on being able to efficiently detect new files inside of the NFS-shared DataDir. By default, NFS clients are configured to cache responses for up to 60 seconds, which means that it can take up to a minute before a Package Manager service is able to respond to certain requests. For most deployments, this is an unacceptably long delay.

Therefore, we strongly recommend that you modify your NFS client settings for the mount on which you’ll be hosting your DataDir. Typically, the best way to accomplish this is to set lookupcache=pos for your NFS mount, which will allow existing files to be cached, but contact the NFS server directly to check for the existence of new files. If this setting is not acceptable for your mount, you could alternatively consider shortening acdirmax or actimeo so that your client becomes aware of new files within, for instance, 5 seconds, instead of the default of 60.

Note

If you are using Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), file attribute caching will be enabled by default using the Amazon EFS recommended mount options. We recommend adding the lookupcache=pos option when mounting Amazon EFS file systems.

Managing Cluster Nodes

The admin CLI provides limited node management capabilities. You can list nodes, take nodes offline, and bring offline nodes back online.

Listing Nodes

To enumerate nodes in your cluster, run the following command.

Terminal
rspm cluster nodes

Each line of the response includes:

  • The node hostname. The hostname corresponds to the Server.HostName property. If Server.HostName is not set, then the server’s hostname will be used.
  • The Package Manager version used by the node.
  • The mode (offline/online) for the node.

Changing Offline/Online Mode

To take nodes offline or bring them back online, use the rspm cluster offline and rspm cluster online commands. You must specify the nodes for the operation, and you can optionally specify a timeout in seconds.

Note

The admin CLI also supports the commands rspm offline and rspm online, which can be used to take a single Package Manager instance offline or to bring it back online. These commands only affect the instance the command is issued. Refer to the Online and Offline Modes section for more details.

Terminal
# Take Node1 and Node2 offline.
rspm cluster offline --nodes=Node1,Node2

# Bring Node1 and Node2 back online.
rspm cluster online --nodes=Node1,Node2

# Bring Node3 online with a 5 minute timeout.
rspm cluster online --nodes=Node3 --timeout=300

When the rspm offline and rspm online commands complete, the nodes will be listed.

Upgrading a Cluster

Upgrade Steps

To reduce downtime during cluster upgrades, we allow specific nodes to be taken offline for upgrading. This provides the ability to always have multiple nodes running to maintain high availability.

Note

Take all nodes offline before bringing any upgraded nodes back online to avoid version mismatches. If you forget to take any non-upgraded nodes offline when bringing an upgraded node back online, the non-upgraded nodes will be using a binary that expects an earlier schema version and will be subject to unexpected and potentially serious errors. These nodes will detect an out-of-date database schema within 30 seconds and shut down automatically.

To upgrade a cluster with minimal downtime, follow these steps:

  1. Take one or more nodes offline using the rspm cluster offline command. See Managing Cluster Nodes for more details.
  2. Upgrade the offline nodes. See Upgrading for upgrading each node.
  3. Take the remaining nodes offline.
  4. Bring the upgraded nodes back online.
  5. Upgrade the remaining nodes and bring them back online.

Example Upgrade

Below is an example procedure for upgrading a 4-node cluster. We assume the nodes are named Node1, Node2, etc.

Terminal
# Take nodes 1 and 2 offline
rspm cluster offline --nodes=Node1,Node2

# Upgrade nodes 1 and 2
ssh node1
sudo apt install ./rstudio-pm_2025.04.0-4_amd64.deb
exit
ssh node2
sudo apt install ./rstudio-pm_2025.04.0-4_amd64.deb
exit

# Take nodes 3 and 4 offline
rspm cluster offline --nodes=Node3,Node4

# Bring nodes 1 and 2 back online. Use a long timeout after
# upgrades to allow for database migrations.
rspm cluster online --nodes=Node1,Node2 --timeout=300

# Upgrade nodes 3 and 4
ssh node4
sudo apt install ./rstudio-pm_2025.04.0-4_amd64.deb
exit
ssh node3
sudo apt install ./rstudio-pm_2025.04.0-4_amd64.deb
exit

# Bring nodes 3 and 4 back online
rspm cluster online --nodes=Node3,Node4

Downgrading

If you wish to move from an HA environment to a single-node environment, please follow these steps:

  1. Stop all Package Manager services on all nodes.
  2. Reconfigure your network to route traffic directly to one of the nodes, unless you wish to continue using a load balancer.
  3. If you wish to move all shared file data to the node, configure the server’s Server.DataDir to point to a location on the node, and copy all the data from the NFS share to this location. Refer to the File Storage section for more information.
  4. If you wish to move the databases to this node, install PostgreSQL on the node and copy the data. Moving the PostgreSQL databases from one server to another is beyond the scope of this guide. Please note that we do not support migrating from PostgreSQL to SQLite.
  5. Start the Package Manager process.
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