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The DROP VIRTUAL CLUSTER statement removes virtual clusters in order to restart a physical cluster replication (PCR) stream. Virtual clusters are used only as part of the workflow. PCR happens between an active primary cluster and a passive standby cluster that accepts updates from the primary cluster. The unit of replication is a virtual cluster, which is part of the underlying infrastructure in the primary and standby clusters. The CockroachDB cluster has:
  • The system virtual cluster manages the cluster’s control plane and the replication of the cluster’s data. Admins connect to the system virtual cluster to configure and manage the underlying CockroachDB cluster, set up PCR, create and manage a virtual cluster, and observe metrics and logs for the CockroachDB cluster and each virtual cluster.
  • The application virtual cluster manages the cluster’s data plane. Application virtual clusters contain user data and run application workloads.
For more detail, refer to the .
The DROP VIRTUAL CLUSTER statement will delete all data related to the specified virtual cluster.

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Required privileges

DROP VIRTUAL CLUSTER requires one of the following privileges:
  • The admin role.
  • The MANAGEVIRTUALCLUSTER .
Use the statement: 
GRANT SYSTEM MANAGEVIRTUALCLUSTER TO user;

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Synopsis

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>

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Parameters

ParameterDescription
IF EXISTSDrop a virtual cluster if it exists. If it does not exist, do not return an error.
virtual_cluster_specThe name of the virtual cluster.
IMMEDIATEDrop a virtual cluster immediately instead of waiting for garbage collection ().

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Examples

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Restart a PCR stream

To restart a PCR stream, drop the virtual cluster: 
DROP VIRTUAL CLUSTER IF EXISTS main;
Next, restart the PCR stream with the syntax: 
CREATE VIRTUAL CLUSTER main FROM REPLICATION OF main ON 'postgresql://{connection string to primary}';

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Remove a virtual cluster without waiting for garbage collection

Use IMMEDIATE to drop a virtual cluster instead of waiting for data to be garbage collected: 
DROP VIRTUAL CLUSTER IF EXISTS main IMMEDIATE;

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See also