Connecting Your Server to Amazon RDS

Overview

Preinstalled Server images, such as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) and OVA files, include a local PostgreSQL database.

For a production installation, it is recommended to replace the use of this database with an external PostgreSQL server. The external server can be a separate virtual machine, or a managed database service such as Amazon RDS.

Best Practices

The best time to change the database used by the JetPatch server is immediately after launching it. In this case, there is no need to migrate any data. In case the migration is done at a later time, you should also port the data as part of migration process. See Migrating the Database.

Prerequisites

To use the new database, JetPatch Agent Manager will need the following:

• Network connectivity to the database from the JetPatch server
• Username and password
• Empty scheme to work with. Such a scheme can be created from the JetPatch server itself, by running the following shell command:

  psql -U <db-username> -h <db-hostname> -c "CREATE DATABASE <db-scheme>" -d postgres

JetPatch Agent Manager is not a particularly heavy application in terms of database load. In RDS, it's recommended to start out with a low number of provisioned IOPS, and scale it later if needed.

Changing the Database in Use

1. Log into the JetPatch server.
2. Stop tomcat by running: sudo service tomcat stop
3. Configure the database connection, by editing the file

   /usr/share/tomcat/default/conf/intigua.properties

   • The properties to edit are the ones that start with "db.", and are typically found at the end of the file.
   • Here is an example configuration of these properties for an RDS setup:

     db.url=jdbc:postgresql://acme-intigua-234.czkhwgxuluqi.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:5432/intiguadb

     db.username=intigua

     db.password=2FyagPjkhj0eTsO

   • Note that the database schema to use (the last part of the db.url parameter) must already exist on the new database. You can create it with the psql command listed above if needed.
4. Turn off, disable and remove the preinstalled postgreSQL server, and restart Tomcat:

   sudo systemctl stop postgresql-9.5

   sudo systemctl disable postgresql-9.5

   sudo yum remove -y postgresql95-server

   sudo systemctl start tomcat

Testing the change

A few minutes after starting Tomcat, log into the JetPatch server. Note that the first startup after a database change takes a bit more time than usual, due to the database initialization.

In case there are issues, check the log files at /usr/share/tomcat/default/logs/ for diagnostic information.

Known Limitations

In case of a database failover to a secondary site or availability zone,JetPatch Agent Manager console and API operations may fail or hang due to presence on the JetPatch server of pooled database connections which are still pointing towards the failed database instance. Therefore it is recommended to follow any database failover with a restart of the JetPatch server, which will refresh the entire database connection pool.