Deploy TiDB Offline Using TiDB Ansible

This guide describes how to deploy a TiDB cluster offline using TiDB Ansible.

Prepare

Before you start, make sure that you have:

1. A download machine

   • The machine must have access to the Internet in order to download TiDB Ansible, TiDB and related packages.
   • For Linux operating system, it is recommended to install CentOS 7.3 or later.

2. Several target machines and one Control Machine

   • For system requirements and configuration, see Prepare the environment.
   • It is acceptable without access to the Internet.

Step 1: Install system dependencies on the Control Machine

Take the following steps to install system dependencies on the Control Machine installed with the CentOS 7 system.

1. Download the pip offline installation package on the download machine and then upload it to the Control Machine.

   Note

   This offline installation package includes pip and sshpass, and only supports the CentOS 7 system.

2. Install system dependencies on the Control Machine.

   tar -xzvf ansible-system-rpms.el7.tar.gz &&
   cd ansible-system-rpms.el7 &&
   chmod u+x install_ansible_system_rpms.sh &&
   ./install_ansible_system_rpms.sh
   

3. After the installation is finished, you can use pip -V to check whether it is successfully installed.

   pip -V
   

   pip 8.1.2 from /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages (python 2.7)
   

Step 2: Create the tidb user on the Control Machine and generate the SSH key

See Create the tidb user on the Control Machine and generate the SSH key.

Step 3: Install TiDB Ansible and its dependencies offline on the Control Machine

Currently, all the versions of Ansible from 2.4 to 2.7.11 are supported. The versions of Ansible and the related dependencies are listed in the tidb-ansible/requirements.txt file. The following installation steps take Ansible 2.5 as an example.

1. Download Ansible 2.5 offline installation package on the download machine and then upload it to the Control Machine.

2. Install TiDB Ansible and its dependencies offline.

   tar -xzvf ansible-2.5.0-pip.tar.gz &&
   cd ansible-2.5.0-pip/ &&
   chmod u+x install_ansible.sh &&
   ./install_ansible.sh
   

3. View the version of TiDB Ansible.

   After TiDB Ansible is installed, you can view the version using ansible --version.

   ansible --version
   

   ansible 2.5.0
   

Step 4: Download TiDB Ansible and TiDB packages on the download machine

The relationship between the tidb-ansible version and the TiDB version is as follows:

1. Install TiDB Ansible on the download machine.

   Use the following method to install Ansible online on the download machine installed with the CentOS 7 system. After Ansible is installed, you can view the version using ansible --version.

   yum install epel-release &&
   yum install ansible curl &&
   ansible --version
   

   ansible 2.5.0
   

   Note

   Make sure that the version of Ansible is 2.5, otherwise a compatibility issue occurs.

2. Download TiDB Ansible.

   Use the following command to download TiDB Ansible 2.0 or 2.1 version with the corresponding tag from the TiDB Ansible project GitHub repo. The default folder name is tidb-ansible.

   git clone -b $tag https://github.com/pingcap/tidb-ansible.git
   

   Note

   • Replace $tag with the value of the selected tag version, such as v2.1.15.
   • It is required to use the corresponding tidb-ansible version when you deploy and upgrade the TiDB cluster. If you deploy TiDB using a mismatched version of tidb-ansible (such as using tidb-ansible v2.1.4 to deploy TiDB v2.1.6), an error might occur.

3. Run the local_prepare.yml playbook, and download TiDB binary online to the download machine.

   cd tidb-ansible &&
   ansible-playbook local_prepare.yml
   

4. After running the above command, copy the tidb-ansible folder to the /home/tidb directory of the Control Machine. The ownership authority of the file must be the tidb user.

Step 5: Configure the SSH mutual trust and sudo rules on the Control Machine

See Configure the SSH mutual trust and sudo rules on the Control Machine.

Step 6: Install the NTP service on the target machines

See Install the NTP service on the target machines.

Step 7: Configure the CPUfreq governor mode on the target machine

See Configure the CPUfreq governor mode on the target machine.

Step 8: Mount the data disk ext4 filesystem with options on the target machines

See Mount the data disk ext4 filesystem with options on the target machines.

Step 9: Edit the inventory.ini file to orchestrate the TiDB cluster

See Edit the inventory.ini file to orchestrate the TiDB cluster.

Step 10: Deploy the TiDB cluster

1. You do not need to run the playbook in ansible-playbook local_prepare.yml.

2. You can use the Report button on the Grafana Dashboard to generate a PDF file. This function depends on the fontconfig package and English fonts. To use this function, download the offline installation package, upload it to the grafana_servers machine, and install it. This package includes fontconfig and open-sans-fonts, and only supports the CentOS 7 system.

   tar -xzvf grafana-font-rpms.el7.tar.gz &&
   cd grafana-font-rpms.el7 &&
   chmod u+x install_grafana_font_rpms.sh &&
   ./install_grafana_font_rpms.sh
   

3. See Deploy the TiDB cluster.

Test the TiDB cluster

See Test the TiDB cluster.