By default, Eclair stores its data on the machine's local file system (typically in ~/.eclair directory) using SQLite.

It also supports PostgreSQL version 10.6 and higher as a database backend.

To enable PostgreSQL support set the driver parameter to postgres:

eclair.db.driver = postgres

To configure the connection settings use the database, host, port username and password parameters:

eclair.db.postgres.database = "mydb"
eclair.db.postgres.host = "127.0.0.1"      # Default: "localhost"
eclair.db.postgres.port = 12345            # Default: 5432
eclair.db.postgres.username = "myuser"
eclair.db.postgres.password = "mypassword"

Eclair uses Hikari connection pool (https://github.com/brettwooldridge/HikariCP) which has a lot of configuration parameters. Some of them can be set in Eclair config file. The most important is pool.max-size, it defines the maximum allowed number of simultaneous connections to the database.

A good rule of thumb is to set pool.max-size to the CPU core count times 2. See https://github.com/brettwooldridge/HikariCP/wiki/About-Pool-Sizing for better estimation.

eclair.db.postgres.pool {
    max-size = 8                    # Default: 10
    connection-timeout = 10 seconds # Default: 30 seconds
    idle-timeout = 1 minute         # Default: 10 minutes
    max-life-time = 15 minutes      # Default: 30 minutes
}

Running multiple Eclair processes connected to the same database can lead to data corruption and loss of funds. That's why Eclair supports database locking mechanisms to prevent multiple Eclair instances from accessing one database together.

Use postgres.lock-type parameter to set the locking schemes.

eclair.db.postgres.lock-type = "none" // Default: "lease"

There are two main configuration parameters for the lease locking scheme: lease.interval and lease.renew-interval. lease.interval defines lease validity time. During the lease time no other node can acquire the lock, except the lease holder. After that time the lease is assumed expired, any node can acquire the lease. So that only one node can update the database at a time. Eclair extends the lease every lease.renew-interval until terminated.

eclair.db.postgres.lease {
    interval = 30 seconds        // Default: 5 minutes
    renew-interval =  10 seconds // Default: 1 minute
}

The PostgreSQL driver doesn't support Eclair's built-in online backups. Instead, you should use the tools provided by PostgreSQL.

For nodes with infrequent channel updates its easier to use pg_dump to perform the task.

It's important to stop the node to prevent any channel updates while a backup/restore operation is in progress. It makes sense to back up the database after each channel update, to prevent restoring an outdated channel's state and consequently losing the funds associated with that channel.

For more information about backup refer to the official PostgreSQL documentation: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/backup.html

For busier nodes it isn't practical to use pg_dump. Fortunately, PostgreSQL provides built-in database replication which makes the backup/restore process more seamless.

To set up database replication you need to create a main database, that accepts all changes from the node, and a replica database. Once replication is configured, the main database will automatically send all the changes to the replica. In case of failure of the main database, the node can be simply reconfigured to use the replica instead of the main database.

PostgreSQL supports different types of replication. The most suitable type for an Eclair node is synchronous streaming replication, because it provides a very important feature, that helps keep the replicated channel's state up to date:

When requesting synchronous replication, each commit of a write transaction will wait until confirmation is received that the commit has been written to the write-ahead log on disk of both the primary and standby server.

Follow the official PostgreSQL high availability documentation for the instructions to set up synchronous streaming replication: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/high-availability.html

Using Eclair with an outdated version of the database or a database created with another seed might lead to loss of funds.

Every time Eclair starts, it checks if the Postgres database connection settings have changed since the last start. If in fact the settings have changed, Eclair stops immediately to prevent potentially dangerous but accidental configuration changes to come into effect.

Eclair stores the latest database settings in the ${data-dir}/last_jdbcurl file, and compares its contents with the database settings from the config file.

The node operator can force Eclair to accept new database connection settings by removing the last_jdbcurl file.

Eclair supports migrating your existing node from Sqlite to Postgres. Note that the opposite (from Postgres to Sqlite) is not supported.

⚠️ Once you have migrated from Sqlite to Postgres there is no going back!

To migrate from Sqlite to Postgres, follow these steps:

1. Stop Eclair
2. Edit eclair.conf
   1. Set eclair.db.postgres.* as explained in the section Connection Settings.
   2. Set eclair.db.driver=dual-sqlite-primary. This will make Eclair use both databases backends. All calls to sqlite will be replicated in postgres.
   3. Set eclair.db.dual.migrate-on-restart=true. This will make Eclair migrate the data from Sqlite to Postgres at startup.
   4. Set eclair.db.dual.compare-on-restart=true. This will make Eclair compare Sqlite and Postgres at startup. The result of the comparison is displayed in the logs.
3. Delete the file ~/.eclair/last_jdbcurl. The purpose of this file is to prevent accidental change in the database backend.
4. Start Eclair. You should see in the logs:
   1. migrating all tables...
   2. migration complete
   3. comparing all tables...
   4. comparison complete identical=true (NB: if identical=false, contact support)
5. Eclair should then finish startup and operate normally. Data has been migrated to Postgres, and Sqlite/Postgres will be maintained in sync going forward.
6. Edit eclair.conf and set eclair.db.dual.migrate-on-restart=false but do not restart Eclair yet.
7. We recommend that you leave Eclair in dual db mode for a while, to make sure that you don't have issues with your new Postgres database. This a good time to set up Backups and replication.
8. After some time has passed, restart Eclair. You should see in the logs:
   1. comparing all tables...
   2. comparison complete identical=true (NB: if identical=false, contact support)
9. At this point we have confidence that the Postgres backend works normally, and we are ready to drop Sqlite for good.
10. Edit eclair.conf
    1. Set eclair.db.driver=postgres
    2. Set eclair.db.dual.compare-on-restart=false
11. Restart Eclair. From this moment, you cannot go back to Sqlite! If you try to do so, Eclair will refuse to start.