Host a Website with High Availability

When deploying a website or application, one of the most important elements to consider is availability, or the period of time for which your content is accessible to users. High availability is a term used to describe server setups that eliminate single points of failure by offering redundancy, monitoring, and failover. This ensures that even if one component of your web stack goes down, the content will still be accessible.

This guide shows how to host a highly available website with WordPress. However, you can use this setup to serve other types of content as well. This guide is intended to be a tutorial on the setup of such a system. For more information on how each element in the high availability stack functions, refer to our introduction to high availability .

Before You Begin

1. Create 9 Compute Instances using the CentOS 7 distribution, all in the same data center. See our Getting Started with Linode and Creating a Compute Instance guides.

2. Follow our Setting Up and Securing a Compute Instance guide to update your system. You may also wish to set the timezone, configure your hostname, create a limited user account, and harden SSH access. Do not create firewall rules yet, as we’ll be handling that step in our guide.

3. The Linodes we create in this guide will use the following hostname conventions:

   • File system nodes - gluster1, gluster2, gluster3
   • Database nodes - galera1, galera2, galera3
   • Application nodes - app1, app2, app3

   You can call your nodes anything you like, but try to keep the naming consistent for organizational purposes. When you see one of the above names, be sure to substitute the hostname you configured for the corresponding node.

4. To create a private network among your Linodes, you’ll need a private IP address for each.

GlusterFS

The first step towards creating a high-availability setup is to install and configure a file system using GlusterFS. In this section, we’ll be using three 2GB Linodes named gluster1, gluster2, and gluster3.

Edit the /etc/hosts file on each Linode to match the following, substituting your own private IP addresses, fully qualified domain names, and host names:

File: /etc/hosts

1 2 3

192.168.1.2 gluster1.yourdomain.com gluster1 192.168.3.4 gluster2.yourdomain.com gluster2 192.168.5.6 gluster3.yourdomain.com gluster3

Install GlusterFS

These steps should be run on each file system node in your cluster.

1. Add the centos-release-gluster repository, which will allow you to install the GlusterFS server edition package:

   yum install epel-release
   yum install centos-release-gluster
   yum install glusterfs-server
   Note

   During the glusterfs-server installation, you may be prompted to verify a GPG key from the CentOS Storage SIG repository. Before running the third command, you can manually import the GPG key:

   rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-SIG-Storage

2. Start the GlusterFS daemon:

   systemctl start glusterd

Add Firewall Rules

Run the following commands on each Linode in your GlusterFS cluster.

1. Add firewall rules that allow the GlusterFS service to communicate between your trusted servers. Replace the IP addresses below with the private IP addresses of your hosts:

   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-service=glusterfs --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.1.2/32 --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.3.4/32 --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.5.6/32 --permanent
   Note

   In the Linode Manager, you may notice that the netmask for your private IP addresses is /17. Firewalld does not recognize this, so a /32 prefix should be used instead.

2. Reload your firewall configuration:

   firewall-cmd --reload

3. Enable the firewalld and glusterd services to have them start automatically on boot:

   systemctl enable firewalld glusterd

Configure GlusterFS

1. Create a trusted storage pool. A storage pool is a trusted network of file servers that will communicate to share data. You only need to run this command on one of your nodes. We use gluster1 in this example, probing each of the other nodes we want to add to our storage pool:

   gluster peer probe gluster2
   gluster peer probe gluster3

2. On each Linode, create a directory to store the files to be replicated. We’ll use /data/example-volume, but you can create this directory wherever you like, and with a name of your choosing:

   mkdir -p /data/example-volume

3. Create a distributed replicated volume. This step needs to be done on only one of the nodes in your pool. In this example, we create the volume example-volume, which sets /data/example-volume as the brick storage directory for each Linode in the network. Replace the volume name and the hostname values with your own:

   gluster volume create example-volume replica 3 gluster1:/data/example-volume gluster2:/data/example-volume gluster3:/data/example-volume force

4. Start the volume to enable replication among servers in your pool. Replace example-volume with your volume name:

   gluster volume start example-volume

   Check the configuration by running gluster volume info. If everything is working correctly, the output should resemble the following. Check that each brick is listed here:

   Volume Name: example-volume
   Type: Replicate
   Volume ID: 1b5ce8e2-2e1e-4207-b8c9-b704ef8a6ebc
   Status: Started
   Number of Bricks: 1 x 3 = 3
   Transport-type: tcp
   Bricks:
   Brick1: gluster1:/data/example-volume
   Brick2: gluster2:/data/example-volume
   Brick3: gluster3:/data/example-volume
   Options Reconfigured:
   performance.readdir-ahead: on

Test Replication

This section explains how to test file replication between servers in your pool. Testing in this manner should not be done in a live production environment.

1. Mount the volume on one of your hosts. This example uses gluster1, but you can use any file system node:

   mount -t glusterfs gluster1:/example-volume /mnt

2. Create an empty file called test within /mnt, where we mounted the volume. Do not write directly to /data/example-volume or its subdirectories.

   touch /mnt/test

3. From your other file system nodes, check the contents of your volume:

   ls /data/example-volume

   If replication is working properly, the test file you created on the mounted volume should now show up on your other hosts.

4. Delete the test file from /mnt (on the same host used to create it) and unmount the volume before using GlusterFS in production:

   rm /mnt/test
   umount /mnt

Galera with XtraDB

Now that we have a replicated file system, we can begin to set up our database cluster. In this section, we use a cluster of Percona XtraDB database servers with Galera replication.

We’ll use three 2GB Linodes with hostnames galera1, galera2, and galera3 as our database nodes. Create these now if you have not already, and edit the /etc/hosts file on each to add the following, replacing the private IP addresses, fully qualified domain names, and hostnames of your database nodes:

File: /etc/hosts

1 2 3

192.168.1.2 galera1.yourdomain.com galera1 192.168.3.4 galera2.yourdomain.com galera2 192.168.5.6 galera3.yourdomain.com galera3

Install Galera and XtraDB

Install Galera and XtraDB on each Linode that will be in the database cluster.

1. Remove the mysql-libs package from each node:

   yum remove mysql-libs

2. Install the following packages on each database node:

   yum install wget epel-release
   yum install https://downloads.percona.com/downloads/percona-release/percona-release-0.1-6/redhat/percona-release-0.1-6.noarch.rpm
   yum install Percona-XtraDB-Cluster-57 Percona-XtraDB-Cluster-shared-57
   Note

   When installing Percona-XtraDB-Cluster-57 and Percona-XtraDB-Cluster-shared-57, you will be prompted to verify a GPG key from the Percona repository. Before running the third command, you can manually import the GPG key:

   wget https://repo.percona.com/yum/PERCONA-PACKAGING-KEY &&  rpm --import PERCONA-PACKAGING-KEY

Add Firewall Rules

Run the following commands on each database node.

1. Create and edit /etc/firewalld/services/galera.xml to match the following:

   File: /etc/firewalld/services/galera.xml

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <service> <short>Galera Replication</short> <description>Galera Master-Master Replication and State Transfer</description> <port protocol="tcp" port="3306"/> <port protocol="tcp" port="4444"/> <port protocol="tcp" port="4567"/> <port protocol="tcp" port="4568"/> </service>

2. Add firewall rules that allow Galera and MySQL service to communicate between your trusted servers. Replace the IP addresses below with the private IP addresses of your database nodes:

   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-service=mysql --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-service=galera --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.1.2/32 --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.3.4/32 --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.5.6/32 --permanent
   Note

   In the Linode Manager, you may notice that the netmask for your private IP addresses is /17. Firewalld does not recognize this, so a /32 prefix should be used instead.

3. Reload your firewall configuration and enable the firewalld service to start automatically on boot:

   firewall-cmd --reload
   systemctl enable firewalld

Disable SELinux for MySQL

SELinux is enabled by default on CentOS 7 Linodes, and it can interfere with the Galera cluster’s operation. On each database node, configure SELinux to permit operations for MySQL that it would otherwise deny:

yum install policycoreutils-python
semanage permissive -a mysqld_t

When in this mode, SELinux will still log operations that it would have denied in /var/log/audit/audit.log.

To Enable Enforcing Mode

SE Linux permissive mode disables all SELinux policies for the MySQL service. To enable enforcing mode with SELinux and Galera consult the following guides:

• Galera Cluster - SELinux Configuration
• Lock Down: Enforcing SELinux with Percona XtraDB Cluster

Configure Your Galera Cluster

Configure the cluster to use XtraBackup for state snapshot transfer (SST), which is a more efficient way of syncing data between database nodes than other alternatives like rsync or mysqldump.

1. Edit /etc/percona-xtradb-cluster.conf.d/wsrep.cnf on each of your database nodes and substitute in values from the following file excerpt:

   File: /etc/percona-xtradb-cluster.conf.d/wsrep.cnf

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

   [mysqld] # ... wsrep_cluster_address = gcomm://galera1,galera2,galera3 # ... wsrep_node_address=192.168.x.x # ... wsrep_cluster_name=Cluster # ... wsrep_node_name=galera1 # ... wsrep_sst_method=xtrabackup-v2 # ... wsrep_sst_auth="sstuser:password"

   The values for wsrep_node_name and wsrep_node_address should be configured individually for each node, using the private IP address and the hostname for that node. The rest of the lines should match on all your database nodes.

   In the line beginning with wsrep_sst_auth, replace password with a secure password of your choosing and keep it in a safe place. It will be needed later.

   Note

   The xtrabackup-v2 service accesses the database as sstuser, authenticating using password to log into MySQL to grab backup locks for replication.

2. On your first database node, start MySQL as the primary component in your cluster. This process is known as bootstrapping. This tells the database node to start as the primary component that the other nodes in the cluster will use as a reference point when they join the cluster and sync their data:

   systemctl start mysql@bootstrap

   This command should be run only when bringing up a cluster for the first time, not for reconnecting nodes to an existing cluster.

3. MySQL will generate a temporary password when it is started for the first time. On the first node, search MySQL’s log file for this password:

   sudo grep 'A temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log

   The output will resemble the following:

   2018-07-11T16:28:15.356630Z 1 [Note] A temporary password is generated for root@localhost: temporary_generated_password

   Copy the password and save it for use in the next step.

4. Run the MySQL secure installation from the first node:

   mysql_secure_installation

   This will display a series of prompts that will allow you to set your MySQL root user password, remove anonymous users, disable remote root login, remove a default test database, and reload privileges. It is necessary to reset the temporary password generated by MySQL in order to issue further commands to the database. Additional details on each item will be provided in the prompts. After reading each prompt, it is recommended that you answer yes to all of the questions for a secure installation.

5. On the first node, enter your MySQL shell:

   mysql -u root -p

   Create a database user and enable replication. Replace password with the password you set in Step 1:

   CREATE USER 'sstuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
   GRANT RELOAD, LOCK TABLES, PROCESS, REPLICATION CLIENT ON *.* TO 'sstuser'@'localhost';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

6. On your other nodes, start MySQL normally to have them join the cluster:

   systemctl start mysql

To learn more about xtrabackup privileges, visit the Percona XtraBackup documentation .

Test Database Replication

Now that your database nodes are configured, test to make sure they’ve all joined the cluster and are replicating properly.

1. Enter the MySQL shell on any database node, using the mysql command. Run the following command in MySQL to check the status of your cluster:

   SHOW STATUS LIKE 'wsrep_cluster%';

   If your cluster has been configured properly, your output should resemble the following, showing the expected value of 3 for wsrep_cluster_size, and wsrep_cluster_status should show Primary:

   +--------------------------+--------------------------------------+
   | Variable_name            | Value                                |
   +--------------------------+--------------------------------------+
   | wsrep_cluster_conf_id    | 3                                    |
   | wsrep_cluster_size       | 3                                    |
   | wsrep_cluster_state_uuid | a3dab288-3275-11e6-a26f-42e24e1d7125 |
   | wsrep_cluster_status     | Primary                              |
   +--------------------------+--------------------------------------+
   4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

   Note

   If you add to or remove nodes from the cluster in the future, you may notice the value for wsrep_cluster_conf_id increases each time. This value is the number of changes the cluster’s configuration has gone through, and does not directly affect functionality. The above value of 3 is only an example.

2. Create a test database:

   CREATE DATABASE testdb;

3. On a different database node, enter the mysql cli and check whether you can see the database you created:

   SHOW DATABASES;

   This should output a table that includes the testdb database, confirming that the databases are synchronized:

   +--------------------+
   | Database           |
   +--------------------+
   | information_schema |
   | mysql              |
   | performance_schema |
   | sys                |
   | testdb             |
   +--------------------+
   4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

   You can run the same command on any other database node to check that replication is occurring across the entire cluster.

4. Exit the MySQL CLI on all nodes:

   quit

Apache Servers

With file system and database clusters set up, you’ll now need web servers to deliver your sites or applications. For our application nodes, we’ll use three 2GB Linodes with the hostnames app1, app2, and app3.

Before you start, edit the /etc/hosts file on each application node to include the private IP address and hostname for each application node and for the file system nodes we set up previously:

File: /etc/hosts

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

192.168.0.1 app1.yourdomain.com app1 192.168.2.3 app2.yourdomain.com app2 192.168.4.5 app3.yourdomain.com app3 192.168.1.2 gluster1.yourdomain.com gluster1 192.168.3.4 gluster2.yourdomain.com gluster2 192.168.5.6 gluster3.yourdomain.com gluster3

Add Firewall Rules

Run the following commands on each app node to start your firewall, enable it on boot, and configure firewall rules to allow web traffic on port 80. To enable HTTPS traffic, run the third command again, substituting https for http, before reloading the rules:

systemctl start firewalld
systemctl enable firewalld
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
firewall-cmd --reload

Allow Private Traffic to GlusterFS Nodes

To allow our application servers to communicate with the networked file system, we need to add firewall rules to the file system nodes. On each of your GlusterFS nodes, enter the following commands, substituting the private IP address of each application node:

firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.0.1/32 --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.2.3/32 --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.4.5/32 --permanent

After these rules have been set, reload the firewall rules on each file system node:

firewall-cmd --reload

Allow Private Traffic to Galera Nodes

To allow our application servers to communicate with the database cluster, we need to add firewall rules to the Galera nodes. On each of your Galera nodes, enter the following commands, substituting the private IP address of each application node:

firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.0.1/32 --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.2.3/32 --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.4.5/32 --permanent

After these rules have been set, reload the firewall rules on each file system node:

firewall-cmd --reload

Install Apache

Install the Apache HTTPD web server package on each of your three application nodes:

yum install httpd

At this point, you may also tune your Apache instances to optimize performance based on your site or application’s needs. This step is optional, however, and is beyond the scope of this guide. Check Tuning Your Apache Server for more information.

Configure SELinux Compatibility for Apache

SELinux’s default settings do not allow Apache to access files on the GlusterFS cluster or to make connections to the database cluster. Allow this activity on each application server:

yum install policycoreutils-python
setsebool -P httpd_use_fusefs 1
setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1
setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect_db 1

Mount the Gluster Filesystem

Next, mount the Gluster volume on the application servers. The steps in this section should be performed on each Apache server node.

1. Install glusterfs-fuse:

   yum install glusterfs-fuse

2. Add the following line to /etc/fstab, substituting your own GlusterFS hostnames for gluster1, gluster2 and gluster3, and your volume name for example-volume if appropriate:

   File: /etc/fstab

   1	gluster1:/example-volume /srv/www glusterfs defaults,_netdev,backup-volfile-servers=gluster2:gluster3 0 0

3. Create the /srv/www/ directory and mount the volume to it:

   mkdir /srv/www
   mount /srv/www

4. Set the document root to /srv/www so that Apache serves content from the Gluster volume. Edit your welcome.conf file to match the following:

   File: /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7

   <VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot "/srv/www" <Directory /srv/www> Require all granted Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews </Directory> </VirtualHost>

5. Start the Apache server:

   systemctl start httpd

6. (Optional) You may also want to enable Apache to start on boot:

   systemctl enable httpd

Test Your Configuration

Your Apache servers should now be capable of serving files and applications from your Gluster volume. To test whether everything is connected properly, create a test file and check whether it’s accessible by all of your application servers.

1. On any one of your application nodes, create a blank file in the directory where you mounted your volume:

   touch /srv/www/testfile

2. In a web browser, enter the public IP address of any of your Apache servers. You should see a page titled “Index of /” with a list consisting of testfile. Make sure that the same list is visible when using the public IP of all of your Apache servers.

3. To test redundancy of your file system, you can stop the Gluster daemon on your gluster1 node:

   systemctl stop glusterd

4. Follow the above steps again, creating another test file and checking whether it is visible from your application nodes’ public IPs. Because the GlusterFS volume is replicated and distributed, and because we set backup volumes for our Apache servers, taking down one GlusterFS node should not affect the accessibility of your files.

5. When you’re finished, remove the test files. Do this for any additional test files you created as well:

   rm /srv/www/testfile

6. Remember to bring gluster1’s Gluster daemon back up before continuing:

   systemctl start glusterd

Keepalived

So far, we’ve successfully configured a redundant web stack with three layers of nodes performing a series of tasks. Gluster automatically handles monitoring, and we configured the failover for the file system nodes in our application nodes’ /etc/fstab files. In this section, we use Keepalived to handle database failover.

Keepalived is a routing service that can be used to monitor and fail over components in a high availability configuration. In this section, you will be using the additional private IP address, or floating IP from your database node to fail over to the others if one should go down. A floating IP address is one that can be assigned to a different node if needed. If you didn’t request an additional private IP in the Galera section, contact support and do so before continuing.

We’ve added the floating IP address to galera1, but in practice, it can be configured to any of your database nodes.

No additional Linodes will be created in this section, and all configuration will be done on your database nodes. Before you begin, install keepalived on all of your database nodes:

yum install keepalived

Configure IP Sharing

IP sharing, also referred to as IP failover, is the process by which an IP address is reassigned from one Compute Instance to another in the event the first one fails or goes down. See, Configuring IP Sharing for information about using Linode Cloud Manager to configure IP failover.

Configure IP failover on galera2 and galera3 to take on the floating IP address from galera1 in the event that it fails.

Disable SELinux for Keepalived

SELinux will interfere with Keepalived’s operation by default. Configure SELinux to permit operations for Keepalived that it would otherwise deny:

yum install policycoreutils-python
semanage permissive -a keepalived_t

This guide will later describe how to enable compatibility with SELinux enforcement for Keepalived.

Configure Keepalived

1. Edit the following line in your /etc/sysconfig/keepalived file on all database nodes, adding -P to enable virtual router redundancy protocol:

   File: /etc/sysconfig/keepalived

   1	KEEPALIVED_OPTIONS="-D -P"

2. On all database nodes, back up keepalived.conf:

   mv /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf.backup

3. On all database nodes, replace the original file with the following:

   File: /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

   ! Configuration File for keepalived global_defs { notification_email { } router_id LVS_DBCLUSTER } vrrp_script chk_pxc { script "/usr/bin/clustercheck clustercheck example_password 0" interval 15 fall 4 rise 2 } vrrp_instance VI_1 { state BACKUP nopreempt interface eth0 virtual_router_id 51 priority 50 advert_int 1 track_interface { eth0 } track_script { chk_pxc } authentication { auth_type PASS auth_pass example_password } unicast_src_ip 192.168.0.1 unicast_peer { 192.168.2.3 192.168.4.5 } virtual_ipaddress { 192.168.9.9/17 } notify_master "/bin/echo 'now master' > /tmp/keepalived.state" notify_backup "/bin/echo 'now backup' > /tmp/keepalived.state" notify_fault "/bin/echo 'now fault' > /tmp/keepalived.state" }

   In the lines beginning with script and auth_pass, change example_password to a secure password of your choosing. In the virtual_ipaddress block, replace 192.168.9.9 with the floating IP address you configured previously. Be sure to include the /17 netmask on this line. These sections, and the rest of the file, should be the same on all database nodes.

   In the line beginning with unicast_src_ip, change 192.168.0.1 to the private IP address of the node you are configuring. In the unicast_peer block, change the IP addresses to the private IP addresses of the other two nodes. Note that these sections will be slightly different depending on which node you are configuring.

4. Open the MySQL shell:

   mysql -u root -p

5. Create the user clustercheck, replacing example_password with the password configured in Step 3:

   GRANT USAGE ON *.* to 'clustercheck'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'example_password';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

   This step only needs to be done on one database node. Once complete, exit the MySQL CLI using quit.

6. On all of your database nodes, add the following entry to your firewall configuration, within the <zone> block:

   File: /etc/firewalld/zones/internal.xml

   1 2 3 4

   <rule> <protocol value="vrrp" /> <accept /> </rule>

7. Reload your firewall rules:

   firewall-cmd --reload

8. Start the keepalived service and enable it to load at boot time:

   systemctl start keepalived
   systemctl enable keepalived

9. Reboot each of your three database nodes, one at a time, to bring up the failover configuration.

   Important

   It is important to boot each database node one at a time, otherwise you may bring down the entire cluster, in which case you would need to bootstrap MySQL and add each node to the cluster again. Refer to the Galera documentation on how to restart the entire Galera cluster.

You’ve successfully installed and configured Keepalived. Your database nodes will now be able to fail over if one goes down, ensuring high availability.

(Optional) Configure SELinux Compatibility for Keepalived

When SELinux’s permissive mode is set for a service, SELinux will still log the operations that it would have otherwise denied. These messages are displayed in /var/log/audit/audit.log:

grep -i denied /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep keepalived_t

SELinux provides a tool named audit2allow that analyzes these log messages and generates an SELinux policy that will allow the operations that were denied. Follow these steps to generate such a policy and re-enable normal SELinux enforcement:

1. On each database node, run:

   grep -i denied /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep keepalived_t | audit2allow -M keepalived_galera

2. The tool will generate two files: keepalived_galera.te and keepalived_galera.pp. keepalived_galera.te is a human-readable format for the policy. keepalived_galera.pp is a policy file that SELinux can install on your system.

3. Install the new policy:

   semodule -i keepalived_galera.pp

4. Remove the permissive SELinux setting for Keepalived:

   semanage permissive -d keepalived_t

SELinux should now resume normal enforcement while allowing the operations described by the new policy. If you find that the Keepalived service is not functioning normally, check your audit.log file for further operations that may have been denied. If there are any further denials, you can repeat these steps to update your policy.

NodeBalancer

The final step in creating a highly available website or application is to load balance traffic to the application servers. In this step, we’ll use a NodeBalancer to distribute traffic between the application servers to ensure that no single server gets overloaded. NodeBalancers are highly available by default, and do not constitute a single point of failure.

For instructions on how to install this component, follow our guide on Getting Started with NodeBalancers . Be sure to use the private IP addresses of your application servers when adding nodes to your backend.

WordPress (Optional)

If you’re installing WordPress to manage your new highly available website, we’ll explain how to do so here. If you’re using your cluster to serve a custom application, website, or for another purpose, you may skip this section.

1. Install the MariaDB package on all three of your application nodes. This provides a MySQL client from which to read from and write to your Galera cluster:

   yum install mariadb

2. On one of your database nodes, enter the MySQL shell with the mysql -u root -p command. From there, enter the following to allow communication with your database nodes. Replace password with a secure password of your choosing:

   CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
   CREATE USER'wordpress'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'wordpress'@'%';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

3. On all of your application servers, install PHP and the necessary dependencies:

   yum install php php-mysql php-gd

4. On all of your application servers, update the DocumentRoot setting in /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf to /srv/www/wordpress.

5. Restart Apache on each of your application nodes:

   systemctl restart httpd

6. On just one of your application servers, install the latest version of WordPress into /srv/www and extract it:

   yum install wget
   wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz -O /srv/www/latest.tar.gz
   tar -xvf /srv/www/latest.tar.gz -C /srv/www/

   Optionally, create a backup of your original WordPress archive in case you need to reinstall it at a later time:

   mv /srv/www/latest.tar.gz /srv/www/wordpress-`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`.tar.gz

7. On all of your application servers, change ownership of the /srv/www directory to the Apache user:

   chown -R apache:apache /srv/www

8. Restart Apache on all of your application servers:

   systemctl restart httpd

9. In a web browser, navigate to the IP address of one of your application nodes (or the NodeBalancer) to access the WordPress admin panel. Use wordpress as the database name and user name, enter the password you configured in Step 2, and enter your floating IP address as the database host. For additional WordPress setup instructions, see our guide on Installing and Configuring WordPress .

You’ve successfully configured a highly available WordPress site, and you’re ready to start publishing content. For more information, reference our WordPress configuration guide .

DNS Records

The NodeBalancer in the above system directs all incoming traffic to the application servers. As such, its IP address will be the one you should use when configuring your DNS records. To find this information, visit the NodeBalancers tab in the Linode Manager and look in the IP Address section.

For more information on DNS configuration, refer to our introduction to DNS records and our guide on how to use the DNS Manager .

Configuration Management

Because a high availability configuration involves so many different components, you may want to consider additional software to help you manage the cluster and create new nodes when necessary. For more information on the options available for managing your nodes, see our guides on Salt , Chef , Puppet , and Ansible . You can also refer to our guide on Automating Server Builds for an overview of how to choose a solution that is right for you.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• GlusterFS
• Galera Cluster
• Apache Web Server
• Keepalived
• XtraBackup