Create a multi-zone universe

YugabyteDB Anywhere allows you to create a universe in one geographic region across multiple availability zones using one of the cloud providers.

For specific scenarios such as creating large numbers of tables, high rates of DDL change, and so on, consider creating a universe with dedicated nodes for YB-Master processes. Refer to Create a universe with dedicated nodes for more details.

Prerequisites

Before you start creating a universe, ensure that you performed steps applicable to the cloud provider of your choice, as described in Configure cloud provider.

Create a universe

If no universes have been created yet, the Dashboard does not display any.

Click Create Universe to create a universe and then enter your intent.

The Provider, Regions, and Instance Type fields are initialized based on the configured cloud providers. When you provide the value in the Nodes field, the nodes are automatically placed across all the availability zones to guarantee the maximum availability.

To create a multi-zone universe using Google Cloud provider (GCP), perform the following:

  • Enter a universe name (helloworld1).

  • Enter the region (Oregon).

  • Accept default values for all of the remaining fields (Master Placement, replication factor = 3, Total nodes = 3), as per the following illustration:

    Create Universe on GCP

  • For Instance Configuration, change the instance type (n1-standard-8).

  • Optionally, add configuration flags for your YB-Master and YB-TServer nodes. You can also set flags after universe creation. Refer to Edit configuration flags.

  • Click Create.

After the universe is ready, its Overview tab should appear similar to the following illustration:

Multi-zone universe ready

Examine the universe

The Universes view allows you to examine various aspects of the universe:

  • Overview provides the information on the current YugabyteDB Anywhere version, the number of nodes included in the primary cluster, the cost associated with running the universe, the CPU and disk usage, the geographical location of the nodes, the operations per second and average latency, the number of different types of tables, as well as the health monitor.
  • Tables provides details about YSQL, YCQL, and YEDIS tables included in the universe. Table sizes are calculated across all the nodes in the cluster.
  • Nodes provide details on nodes included in the universe and allows you to perform actions on a specific node (connect, stop, remove, display live and slow queries, download logs). You can also use Nodes to open the cloud provider's instances page. For example, in case of GCP, if you navigate to Compute Engine > VM Instances and search for instances that contain the name of your universe in the instances name, you should see a list of instances.
  • Metrics displays graphs representing information on operations, latency, and other parameters for each type of node and server.
  • Queries displays details about live and slow queries that you can filter by column and text.
  • Replication provides information about any asynchronous replication (also known as xCluster) in the universe.
  • Tasks provides details about the state of tasks running on the universe, as well as the tasks that have run in the past against this universe.
  • Backups displays information about scheduled backups, if any, and allows you to create, restore, and delete backups.
  • Health displays the detailed performance status of the nodes and components involved in their operation. Health also allows you to pause health check alerts.