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Post date: Feb 06, 2014 11:53:4 PM
1. The master is the entry point to the Greenplum Database system. It is the database server process that accepts client connections and processes the SQL commands that system users issue.
2. Users connect to Greenplum Database through the master using a PostgreSQL-compatible client program such as psql or ODBC.
3. The master maintains the system catalog (a set of system tables that contain metadata about the Greenplum Database system itself), however the master does not contain any user data. Data resides only on the segments.
4. The master authenticates client connections, processes incoming SQL commands, distributes the work load between segments, coordinates the results returned by each segment, and presents the final results to the client program.
5. Because the master does not contain any user data, it has very little disk load.
6. The master needs a fast, dedicated CPU for data loading, connection handling, and query planning because extra space is often necessary for landing load files and backup files, especially in production environments.
7. Customers may decide to also run ETL and reporting tools on the master, which requires more disk space and processing power.
8. You may optionally deploy a backup or mirror of the master instance.
9. A backup master host serves as a warm standby if the primary master host becomes nonoperational. You can deploy the standby master on a designated redundant master host or on one of the segment hosts.
10. The standby master is kept up to date by a transaction log replication process, which runs on the standby master host and synchronizes the data between the primary and standby master hosts.
11. If the primary master fails, the log replication process shuts down, and an administrator can activate the standby master in its place. When an the standby master is active, the replicated logs are used to reconstruct the state of the master host at the time of the last successfully committed transaction.
12. Since the master does not contain any user data, only the system catalog tables need to be synchronized between the primary and backup copies. When these tables are updated, changes automatically copy over to the standby master so it is always synchronized with the primary.