Creating a cluster using the web portal

Navigating to the Create Cluster page

Navigate to the BigAnimal portal. Sign in with your account if you need to.
Select the Clusters link on the left to navigate to the Clusters page.
Select Create New Cluster.

You should now find yourself at the Create Cluster page.

Configuring a new cluster

The Cluster Settings tab

In the free trial, the range of cluster options is somewhat limited but should be more than sufficient for demonstrating the capabilities of BigAnimal.

Select your Cluster Type. Pick Single Node. If you're interested in learning more about the BigAnimal's high-availability deployment options, see Cluster types.
Provider is either AWS or Azure. BigAnimal works the same on either one, so choose the one you're familiar with.
Use Cluster Name to describe the purpose of the cluster, for example, "Test for Advanced Server on AWS."
Password is the admin password for the cluster, so pick a strong one! This password is independent of your EDB account.
Database Type is one of:
- EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL Advanced Server for Oracle database compatibility
- PostgreSQL for official community builds of standard PostgreSQL
  If you're interested in EDB's enhancements to PostgreSQL for Oracle database compatibility, choose Advanced Server. Otherwise, choose PostgreSQL.
Postgres Version allows you to select from among the supported versions for either database type.
Region options depend on the provider you chose. Select the one closest to your application.
For Instance Type and Storage, only one option is available for each field during the trial, so just choose that. The full sets of instance types and storage options are available in the BigAnimal paid subscriptions.
Network Connectivity is restricted to a public IP for the trial, but you can restrict access to trusted networks by selecting the Use allowlists to restrict network access check box and specifying one or more CIDR blocks to allow access from.

The DB Configuration tab

This is entirely optional, but if you're curious, you can find a full set of PostgreSQL configuration options on this tab, allowing you to tune a cluster for specific needs or resource constraints.

The Additional Settings tab

This page has backup retention period, ready-only workload, and IAM authentication settings, but those features aren't available in the trial. Skip this tab unless you're curious.

Provisioning

Select Create Cluster, and you're brought back to the Clusters page with your newly configured cluster now populating the list.

Initially, the new cluster is being provisioned. This usually takes a minute or two but can take up to an hour. A progress bar is shown near the right.

Once your first cluster is fully provisioned, your 14-day free trial officially starts, and a countdown appears telling you how many days are left in your trial.

Select the provisioned cluster to view the parameters you'll need to connect to it.

Next steps

Connect to your cluster.