Database Maintenance

Databases require ongoing maintenance to prevent poor application performance, system downtime, and data loss. Here are Siemplify guidelines for the maintenance of your Siemplify database (PostgreSQL server).

Monitoring

*Please note that the customer is responsible for Monitoring.

Please make sure to use your company’s monitoring tools to monitor the following:

• Disk space and system load (800GB). If disk space exceeds 80%, please contact Siemplify Support.
• CPU. If CPU exceeds 80% for more than 5 minutes in a row, please contact Siemplify Support.
• Memory. If Memory exceeds 80% for more than 5 minutes in a row, please contact Siemplify Support.

One option for monitoring is to use the Siemplify Job “Machine Resource Utilization” in the Siemplify Platform.

Refer here for full information on data prerequisites.

Backup

*Please note that Siemplify is responsible for the Backup procedure.

A database backup strategy is an important focus of any maintenance plan. While primarily meant to protect against data loss, database backups may also be necessary to address other significant maintenance requirements.

Siemplify provides a built-in capability to run a daily full backup. You can use this option for an all-in-one deployment. However Siemplify recommends running an external backup, with an incremental backup every day and a full backup once a week. Folder retention can handle two full backup files (i.e. the last two weeks).
Siemplify best practice is that for one year retention the backup folder should be 450 GB. The database backup files must be stored in an external share folder.
For information on using the Siemplify Backup Settings, click here.

PostgreSQL backup can be easily performed with pg_dump (or pgAdmin depending on your requirements). Note that making a copy of the database has no impact on it. However, this becomes impractical if the database is bigger than a couple of GB.
For more information on Backup and Restore a PostgreSQL database, click here.

Import and Export

*Please note that Siemplify is responsible for the Import and Export procedure.

In order to ensure smooth migration from one server to another, or to move from a single node to an HA mode, we need to export and import the database. For more details on Import and Export for PostgreSQL, click here.

Routine Tasks

Vacuum Freeze

*Please note that Siemplify is responsible for the Vacuum Freeze procedure.

Siemplify will perform a vacuum freeze periodically depending on the customer’s data load and volume. This is an important procedure which needs to be performed in order to recover or reuse disk space, update data statistics, update the visibility map, and protect against loss of very old data. The Vacuum Freeze procedure speeds up and optimizes database performance.
For more details on vacuum freeze, please click here

Reindex

*Please note that Siemplify is responsible for the Reindex procedure.

From time to time Siemplify periodically rebuilds indexes with the reindex command. The exact time period will depend on the customer’s data and volume of their database changes.
For full details on Reindexing, please click here.

Patching

*Please note that Siemplify is responsible for the Patching procedure.

Although Siemplify relies on the publicly available CentOS repositories, we do not recommend that you apply untested patches on your production system.

All Siemplify releases and updates, both major and minor, are certified to work on a fully patched CentOS system. In addition, all of the software components installed by Siemplify (PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch) are updated with each release of Siemplify.

Major upgrades in the OS, for example, from CentOS 7.6 to 8.0 will be addressed as part of a Siemplify major release.
Should a critical vulnerability be exposed in the OS, our teams will test Siemplify against the patch and release a corresponding minor update, which our engineers can install along with the OS patch.