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Clustering a Measurement Archive

The perfSONAR Measurement Archive software esmond is built-on a number of technologies that allow you to run the service across a collection of servers. A collection of servers configured in such a manner is often referred to as a cluster. In general, the primary motivation behind running the measurement archive on a cluster is for one or more of the reasons below:

  1. High availability - If you are running your archive on one server and a component of the software goes down, such as a database, your archive will not be able to service any requests. Clustering can be used to configure things like data replication across servers and fail over to another dataset if a host goes down.
  2. Load balancing - If your measurement archive is servicing a large number of requests, you may want to create a cluster so multiple servers can share the load. There are number of strategies for doing this such as round-robing requests or splitting read and write operations.

The esmond software is built on three primary components all capable of being configured in a cluster. The components are:

  1. Cassandra - This is the database that stores the results of a measurement. Cassandra was designed with horizontal scaling in mind and as such provides a number of options for data replication, fail over, load balancing and adding/removing/replacing nodes over time. See :ref:`multi_ma_clustering-cassandra` for more details.
  2. PostgreSQL - This is the database that stores measurement metadata (description about the tests run such as the type of test and the parameters used). It also stores the usernames, API keys and/or authorized IP addresses that are used to add new information to esmond. PostgreSQL supports a number of data replication options and tools exist to support fail-overs and load balancing. See :ref:`multi_ma_clustering-postgresql`
  3. Apache httpd - Esmond runs on the Apache HTTPD web server. Apache has a number of options for handling fail-overs and load balancing that are detailed in :ref:`multi_ma_clustering-httpd`.

You may cluster some or all of the components if you so choose. For example, you could have a Cassandra cluster but run PostgreSQL and Apache on a single server. It should also be noted that all of these components have been around for a number of years and the documentation that exists on clustering them is extensive. This document will do its best to identify key features and common configurations but is by no means an exhaustive list. It is highly recommended you consult each components documentation before embarking on an attempt to create a clustered configuration.

Clustering Cassandra

Basics of Cassandra Clustering

Cassandra is the component that holds all of the measurement results. Cassandra was designed with running on multiple nodes in mind, and is probably more commonly run on multiple nodes than a single node. The ability to implement high availability and load balancing do not require any additional software. The distribution of your data, how many copies exist and the number of nodes that can go down without causing an interruption are primarily determined by the following two variables:

  1. The number of nodes in your cluster
  2. The replication_factor of your dataset

There are of course other factors, but these are fundamental to getting a basic cluster working. The replication_factor is the total number of complete copies of the data that live in the cluster. For example, let's say we have two nodes and the replication_factor is 1. In this case there is 1 copy of data distributed between the two nodes. Cassandra organizes itself in a token ring, and evenly distributes data amongst each host. In this case that means each node has roughly 50% of the data at a given time. That also means, if one of the nodes goes down, we lose half our data and Cassandra cannot run.

As another example, let's say we still have two nodes but the replication factor is increased to 2. This means that our cluster will keep 2 copies of the data distributed evenly among the nodes. Each node has 100% of the data, so 1 node may go down and our archive can still access the complete set of data. The main takeaway from this example is that increasing the replication factor has increased the number of nodes we can tolerate as down.

As a final example, let's say we keep the replication_factor fixed at 2 but increase to 10 nodes. How many nodes can go down without affecting the cluster? The answer is still only 1. The reason is that adding more nodes further distributes the data amongst the host, with each having roughly 20% of the data (2 replicas divided by 10 hosts = 20% each) but does not increase the number of copies. Thus if we lose 2 nodes, we have no way guaranteeing they didn't overlap in the data they contained. In general, you can only support (replication_factor - 1) hosts going down regardless the number of nodes. In other words, increasing the number of nodes increases data distribution, but does not increase fault tolerance unless there is a corresponding increase in the replication_factor.

Those are the basic ideas but there are lots more details published if you are interested. For more information on how Cassandra distributes data see the Datastax Cassandra Documentation.

Initializing the Cluster

Assuming you have read about clustering Cassandra, decided it is the best course and identified an initial set of nodes to use in your cluster, you are ready to start configuring your cluster. It is highly recommended you read the Datastax Cluster Initialization page for specifics on how build your cluster. We will go through a simple two node example in this document to give a general idea of the process, but for more information it is highly recommended you see the official documentation.

Now, Let's assume we have a two node cluster we wish to initialize. Our nodes have IP addresses 10.0.1.35 and 10.0.1.36 respectively. The steps to configure these into a cluster are as follows:

  1. Install cassandra on each node

  2. On each node you will need to open the following firewall ports:
    • TCP ports 7000 and 7001 are needed for internode communication. These are only used between cassandra servers so you only need to allow the other hosts in the cluster to connect to these ports.
    • TCP port 9160 is needed so esmond can communicate with the Cassandra servers. You may firewall this port so only the host(s) with the esmond package installed may reach this port.
    • You will also want TCP port 7199 open FOR LOCALHOST ONLY so that you may run the nodetool command to get the status of and perform various administrator tasks on the cluster.
    .. seealso:: See the `Datastax Firewall Documentation <http://docs.datastax.com/en/cassandra/2.0/cassandra/security/secureFireWall_r.html>`_ for more details.

  3. Next we need to name our cluster. In this example we will name it "Esmond Cluster". On each node open /etc/cassandra/conf/cassandra.yaml (or /etc/cassandra/cassandra.yaml on Debian) and change cluster_name to this value:

    cluster_name: 'Esmond Cluster'

  4. Next we need to choose a seed node. This node is only used the first time a node comes up to bootstrap itself into the ring. If it goes down it will not affect the nodes that have already been bootstrapped, however you will not be able to add new nodes to a cluster. If you are frequently adding new nodes, you may want to specify multiple seed nodes to prevent this. For our simple two node cluster, one seed node will suffice so we'll choose 10.0.1.35. We set this on both hosts in /etc/cassandra/conf/cassandra.yaml under the seed_provider property as shown below:

    seed_provider:
- class_name: org.apache.cassandra.locator.SimpleSeedProvider
  parameters:
      - seeds: "10.0.1.35"

  5. The final /etc/cassandra/conf/cassandra.yaml properties we must set is the _listen_address_ and _rpc_address_. The _listen_address_ tells cassandra the interface on which to listen for communication from other cassandra nodes. The _rpc_address_ tells it on which interface it can accept connections from esmond. In our example, each host only has one interface, so the first node will set both of these to 10.0.1.35 and the second node will set them to 10.0.1.36.

  6. Clear any data on both nodes you may have from old configurations or cassandra inadvertently starting, etc. Note that this does NOT clear out any existing perfSONAR data.:

    rm -rf /var/lib/cassandra/data/system/*

  7. Restart cassandra on each node:

    service cassandra restart

  8. Our two node cluster should be running. We can verify this with the nodetool status command on either host:

    # nodetool status
Note: Ownership information does not include topology; for complete information, specify a keyspace
Datacenter: datacenter1
=======================
Status=Up/Down
|/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
--  Address    Load       Tokens  Owns   Host ID                               Rack
UN  10.0.1.35  5.91 MB    256     51.0%  ccdab562-b2a2-459e-9a14-6b9758a827fd  rack1
UN  10.0.1.36  3.07 MB    256     49.0%  7a2be11f-02c5-4997-926a-817960c71e18  rack1

Configuring Esmond to use the Cluster

Once the cluster has been initialized, we must configure esmond to use the cluster. This requires setting cassandra_servers in /etc/esmond/esmond.conf to the list of nodes in our cluster:

cassandra_servers = 10.0.1.35:9160,10.0.1.36:9160

We list all of the nodes because any of them can coordinate the request. Esmond will randomly contact one of the nodes and (assuming we set our replication factor high enough relative to the number of down nodes) will fallback to another node if it tries to contact one that is unreachable.

You may also want to set cassandra_replicas to the replication_factor on which you decided. If left unset the default value will be 1. An example:

cassandra_replicas = 1

Changing the replication_factor

You may want to change he replication_factor as you add more nodes, requirements change or if you started esmond before deciding on the value. If you would like to change this do the following:

  1. On your esmond node(s), open /etc/esmond/esmond.conf ant set the property cassandra_replicas to the new value: For example:

    cassandra_replicas = 2

  2. On any single cassandra node run the following (replacing 10.0.1.35 with your host and 2 with the replication factor you desire):

    cqlsh 10.0.1.35 -e "ALTER KEYSPACE esmond WITH REPLICATION = { 'class' : 'SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor' : 2 };"

  3. On every cassandra node, run nodetool repair. Do not run in parallel, wait for the command to complete before moving on to the next node. Note that running this command may take awhile depending on the amount of data.

Clustering PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL provides a number of options for high availability, data replication, and load balancing. It actually has too many options to realistically cover in this document. The PostgreSQL High Availability, Load Balancing and Replication page does a thorough job of comparing and contrasting the various alternatives. It also directs you how to get started on the various options, so there isn't need to rehash that here. If you have clustered Postgres or another relational database before, many of the considerations and strategies should be familiar. A few important pieces of information specific to esmond that may be useful for deciding on and configuring the proposed method:

  • The name of the database where the esmond information is kept is esmond
  • You can change the PostgreSQL username, password and host that esmond uses in /etc/esmond/esmond.conf by changing sql_db_user, sql_db_password, and sql_db_host respectively
  • Often when choosing a replication strategy it is important to understand the write profile of a database. Esmond will only insert new rows into PostgreSQL if you add new tests to be run or change the parameters of an existing test. For example, changing the parameters of a throughput test to run for 30 seconds instead of 20 seconds. Esmond also executes an update on a single column every time it adds new data to Cassandra so that it can keep track of when data was last updated. This means that there will likely be lots of small updates but very few inserts of new data.

Clustering Apache httpd

Basics of Cassandra Clustering

It is possible to cluster your Apache httpd instances running esmond. Each esmond installation will point at the same Cassandra and PostgreSQL instances/clusters. Clustering Apache will allow incoming requests to be load-balanced and/or failover if one of your Apache instances goes down. This section highlights some of the common load balancing and failover techniques such as:

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all your options. Scaling Apache is a topic that has been around for several years now, so there is no shortage of literature on the subject. The sections below will hopefully give you an idea of some of your options, but you should not heistate to do your own research in deciding the best solution for you and/or your organization.

DNS Round Robin

DNS Round Robin is an approach that involves configuring your Domain Name System (DNS) servers to map a hostname to a list of IP addresses. DNS will then alternate the address returned when a lookup is performed. Note that this provides load balancing only and no health checks are performed by DNS. Therefore if one of the servers at an individual IP goes down, a percentage of your users will get a failure when trying to contact your web server since the failing servers IP will not be removed from the round-robin automatically. If load-balancing is your sole concern, this may be an adequate solution. Otherwise pursuing this load balancing solution will require additional measures if one wishes to handle failures as well. The best way to configure DNS Round Robin is to contact your local network administrator if you think this is the right approach for your organization. In summary, DNS Round Robin MAY be a good approach if all of the following hold true:

  • You have the ability (either personally or with the help of your friendly neighborhood network administrator) to update DNS with the required changes.
  • You only care about load-balancing and not failovers OR you have an independent failover mechanism in mind you plan to use in conjunction with the DNS round robin
  • You are happy with a simple round robin algorithm for load balancing

If one or more of the above do not hold true, likely pursuing another option would be recommended.

mod-proxy-balancer

The Apache module mod_proxy_balancer allows one to use an apache server to load balance requests amongst other Apache servers. If you are familiar with configuring Apache this may be a desirable load balancing solution. It also supports multiple load-balancing algorithms in contrast to DNS Round Robin. Again, there are no health checks performed, so it does not handle failovers. In fact, if you create only a single load balancer server, that load balancer can become a single point of failure. With all this in mind, mod_proxy_balancer MAY be a good approach if all of the following hold true:

  • You are comfortable with Apache configuration
  • You prefer to have more balancing options than the traditional round-robin
  • Automatic failover is not a concern OR you have an independent failover mechanism in mind you plan to use in conjunction with mod_proxy_balancer

See the mod_proxy_balancer documentation for details on installing and configuring.

HAProxy and keepalived

This approach is the most flexible and robust of the solutions covered. It also comes with the cost of slightly more complexity (but maybe not as much as you'd expect). It involves two components:

  1. HAProxy, an open source load balancing software designed to handle large volumes of TCP and HTTP traffic. Additionally, it performs regular health checks of your web servers and removes them from the pool if it finds an issue. Since it's not limited to HTTP, it can also be used with services like PostgreSQL to load balance read-only slaves of the database.
  2. keepalived, is routing software that uses Linux Virtual Servers to migrate IP addresses to a backup server if a failure is detected at the master. In this context, keepalived runs on each load balancer and can be used to detect failures if one of the HAproxy nodes goes down. This prevents your HAProxy node from becoming a single point of failure.

Note

keepalived is not required to run HAProxy or vice versa. They are commonly paired together in practice hence the joint discussion here. It is also possible to use keepalived with solutions such as mod_proxy_balancer.

Using HAProxy and keepalived is a good approach if any of the following holds true:

  • You expect a lot of requests (which you probably do or you wouldn't be load balancing) and want a highly scalable solution.
  • You want to automatically remove servers from the load balancing pool if they go down
  • You want to have automatic fail-overs if a load balancer goes down
  • You would like a load balancer that works with more than just HTTPD, such as PostgreSQL
  • You are familiar with the tools or are willing to learn something new

Both HAProxy and keepalived are available in most major Linux distribution's packaging systems (such as yum and apt). For more information on configuring these tools see the HAProxy and keepalived web pages.