Deploy TiDB Lightning

This document describes the hardware requirements of using TiDB Lightning to import data, and how to deploy it manually. Requirements on hardware resources vary with the import modes. For details, refer to the following docs:

• Physical Import Mode Requirements and Limitations
• Logical Import Mode Requirements and Limitations

Online deployment using TiUP (recommended)

1. Install TiUP using the following command:

   curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://tiup-mirrors.pingcap.com/install.sh | sh
   

   This command automatically adds TiUP to the PATH environment variable. You need to start a new terminal session or run source ~/.bashrc before you can use TiUP. (According to your environment, you may need to run source ~/.profile. For the specific command, check the output of TiUP.)

2. Install TiDB Lightning using TiUP. It is recommended to use the same version of TiDB Lightning as the target TiDB cluster. Replace <version> with the version of the target TiDB cluster (for example, v{{{ .tidb-version }}}):

   tiup install tidb-lightning:<version>
   

Manual deployment

Download TiDB Lightning binaries

Refer to Download TiDB Tools and download TiDB Lightning binaries. It is recommended to use the same version of TiDB Lightning as the target TiDB cluster.

Unzip the TiDB Lightning binary package to obtain the tidb-lightning executable file:

tar -zxvf tidb-lightning-${version}-linux-amd64.tar.gz
chmod +x tidb-lightning

Upgrade TiDB Lightning

You can upgrade TiDB Lightning by replacing the binaries alone without further configurations. After the upgrade, you need to restart TiDB Lightning. For details, see How to properly restart TiDB Lightning.

If an import task is running, we recommend you to wait until it finishes before upgrading TiDB Lightning. Otherwise, there might be chances that you need to reimport from scratch, because there is no guarantee that checkpoints work across versions.