Services operations - General

In the General section of the Operations dashboard, you can fork your service, reset the password, pause, or terminate the service.

Fork a service

When you a fork a service, you create an exact copy of the service, including the underlying database. This allows you to create a copy that you can use for testing purposes, or to prepare for a major version upgrade. The only difference between the original and the forked service is that the tsdbadmin user has a different password.

The fork is created by restoring from backup and applying the write-ahead log. The data is fetched from Amazon S3, so forking doesn't tax the running instance.

Forking a service

1. In the Timescale Cloud console, from the Services list, ensure the service you want to form has a status of Running or Paused, then click the name of the service you want to fork.
2. Navigate to the Operations tab.
3. In the General section, click Fork service. In the dialog, confirm by clicking Fork service. The forked service takes a few minutes to start.
4. To change the configuration of your fork, click Advanced options. You can set different compute and storage options, separate from your original database.
5. The forked service shows in the Services dashboard with a label stating which service it has been forked from.

Reset service password

You can reset your service password from the Operations dashboard. This is the password you use to connect to your database, not the password to your Timescale Cloud account. To reset your Timescale Cloud password, navigate to the Account page.

When you reset your service password, you are prompted for your Timescale Cloud password. When you have authenticated, you can create a new service password, ask Timescale Cloud to auto-generate a password, or switch your authentication type between SCRAM and MD5.

SCRAM (Salted Challenge Response Authentication Mechanism) and MD5 (Message Digest Algorithm 5) are cryptographic authentication mechanisms. Timescale Cloud uses SCRAM by default. It is more secure and strongly recommended. The MD5 option is provided for compatibility with older clients.

Pause service

You can pause a service if you want to stop it running temporarily. This stops your service from costing you, but the service is still available and ready to be restarted at any time.

Terminate a service

You can terminate a service to delete it completely. This removes the service and its underlying data from the server. You cannot recover a terminated service.