In this section, you’ll get up and running with 123cluster from zero—no prior experience required. You’ll learn:

• What 123cluster Is
  A unified platform for provisioning, scaling and managing database clusters across multiple engines (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, etc.).

• How It Works
  123cluster provides a control plane (UI, CLI, REST API) that orchestrates your data plane (database servers or containers), automating tasks like deployment, replication setup, backups, restores and teardown.

• Account & Access Setup
  Create your 123cluster account, assign appropriate roles, and generate your first API token.

• Tooling Prerequisites
  Install required CLIs:
  • Terraform (with the Mastercard/restapi provider)
  • Ansible (for optional post-provisioning configuration)

• Quick Start
  
  • Activate your free trial by verifying your email and gaining full platform access.
    
  • Provision your first cluster or replica-set with just a few clicks in the UI.
    
  • Navigate the dashboard to explore database engines, view node status, and manage nodes.
    
  • Perform core operations such as backups, exports, restores, and failover without writing scripts.
    
  • Test advanced workflows like automated replication, node scaling, and step-down procedures.
    
• What You’ll Take Away
  By the end of this section, you’ll have a live database cluster running under 123cluster, understand the core concepts (clusters vs. replica-sets, nodes, backups), and be prepared to automate every step using Terraform and Ansible in the next sections.

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