Perform a planned Postgres leader change with patronictl switchover instead of triggering a failover
domain: patroni.readthedocs.io · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Confirm the cluster is healthy (patronictl list shows all nodes running and streaming), since switchover is only permitted on a healthy cluster
Run patronictl switchover, optionally specifying the leader, --candidate, and --scheduled <timestamp> for a deferred switch
Patroni pauses writes on the current leader, waits for the candidate to catch up on WAL, then promotes it and demotes the old leader to a replica
Verify the new leader with patronictl list and confirm application traffic (via HAProxy/PgBouncer/DNS) follows the leader role rather than a fixed node
Reserve patronictl failover for emergencies (no healthy leader) — it skips the health precondition switchover enforces
Known gotchas
switchover refuses to run if the cluster is unhealthy or the target candidate isn't caught up on WAL; use failover for those cases instead
A scheduled switchover can be cancelled before it runs, but not once Patroni begins the actual promotion sequence
Client connection routing must be tied to the Patroni leader role, not a static node address, or the switchover won't be transparent to applications
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