elasticsearch 7.X cluster with specified master node - elasticsearch

I have 3 elastic node , How can I cluster there three nodes with always same master node , I didn't find any good docs about new elastic 7 way of specify discovery and master node:
discovery.seed_hosts: [ ]
cluster.initial_master_nodes: []
for example I have node a, b, c and I want node a to be master what what should be discovery.seed_hosts and cluster.initial_master_nodes for master node and child nodes
UPDATE
with using Daniel answer , and checking ports are open and node have same cluster name , other nodes didn't join cluster, is there any additional config needed?
UPDATE 2
looks like nodes found each other but for some reason can't choose master node with election:
master not discovered or elected yet, an election requires 2 nodes
with ids [wOZEfOs9TvqGWIHHcKXtkQ, Cs0xaF-BSBGMGB8a-swznA]
Solution
Deleting folder data of all nodes start a node and then add other nodes with first node (as master) as seed host.

Elasticsearch allows you to specify the role of a node. A node (an instance of Elasticsearch) can serve as a coordinating node, master node, voting_only node, data node, ingest node or machine learning node.
With respect to master nodes you can only configure which nodes potentially can become the (active) master, but you cannot specify which one of the so-called master-eligible nodes will be the active master node.
The only exception to this is when you only configure one master-eligible node, then obviously only this one can become the active master. But be aware that in order to get true high availability you need to have at least 3 master-eligible nodes (this ensures that your cluster will still be 100% operational even when losing one of the master-eligible nodes).
Therefore Elastic always recommends to configure 3 or 5 nodes in your cluster as master-eligible nodes. You can configure that role via the node.master property in the Elasticsearch.yml-file. Setting it to true (default) allows that node to become master, while false will ensure that this node never ever will become master and also will not participate in the master election.
Over the life-time of your cluster (master-eligible) nodes might get added and removed. Elasticsearch automatically manages your cluster and the master node election process with the ultimate goal to prevent a split brain scenario from happening, meaning you eventually end up having 2 clusters which go by the same name but with independent master nodes. To prevent that from happening when starting up your cluster for the very first time (bootstrapping your cluster) Elastic requires you to configure the cluster.initial_master_nodes property with the names of the nodes that initially will serve as master-eligible nodes. This property only needs to be configured on nodes that are master-eligible and the setting will only be considered for the very first startup of your cluster. As values you put in the names as configured with the node.name property of your master-eligible nodes.
The discovery.seed_hosts property supports the discovery process which is all about enabling a new node to establish communication with an already existing cluster and eventually joining it when the cluster.name matches. You are supposed to configure it with an array of host names (not node names!) on which you expect other instances of Elasticsearch belonging to the same cluster to be running. You don't need to add all 100 host names of the 100 nodes you may have in your cluster. It's sufficient to list host names of the most stable node names there. As master (eligible) nodes are supposed to be very stable nodes, Elastic recommends to put the host of all master-eligible nodes (typically 3) in there. Whenever you start/restart a node, it goes through this discovery process.
Conclusion
With a cluster made up of 3 nodes you would configure all of them as master-eligible nodes and list the 3 node names in the cluster.initial_master_nodes setting. And you would put all the 3 host names also in the discovery.seed_hosts setting to support the discovery process.
Useful information from the Elasticsearch reference:
Important discovery and cluster formation settings
Discovery and cluster formation settings
Bootstrapping a cluster

Related

Elasticsearch 7.2.0: master not discovered or elected yet, an election requires at least X nodes

I'm trying to automate the process of horizontal scale up and scale down of elasticsearch nodes in kubernetes cluster.
Initially, I deployed an elasticsearch cluster (3 master, 3 data & 3 ingest nodes) on a Kubernetes cluster. Where, cluster.initial_master_nodes was:
cluster.initial_master_nodes:
- master-a
- master-b
- master-c
Then, I performed scale down operation, reduced the number of master node 3 to 1 (unexpected, but for testing purpose). While doing this, I deleted master-c, master-b nodes and restarted master-a node with the following setting:
cluster.initial_master_nodes:
- master-a
Since the elasticsearch nodes (i.e. pods) use persistant volume, after restarting the node, the master-a slowing the following logs:
"message": "master not discovered or elected yet, an election requires at least 2 nodes with ids from [TxdOAdryQ8GAeirXQHQL-g, VmtilfRIT6KDVv1R6MHGlw, KAJclUD2SM6rt9PxCGACSA], have discovered [] which is not a quorum; discovery will continue using [] from hosts providers and [{master-a}{VmtilfRIT6KDVv1R6MHGlw}{g29haPBLRha89dZJmclkrg}{10.244.0.95}{10.244.0.95:9300}{ml.machine_memory=12447109120, xpack.installed=true, ml.max_open_jobs=20}] from last-known cluster state; node term 5, last-accepted version 40 in term 5" }
Seems like it's trying to find master-b and master-c.
Questions:
How to overwrite cluster settings so that master-a won't search for these deleted nodes?
The cluster.initial_master_nodes setting only has an effect the first time the cluster starts up, but to avoid some very rare corner cases you should never change its value once you've set it and generally you should remove it from the config file as soon as possible. From the reference manual regarding cluster.initial_master_nodes:
You should not use this setting when restarting a cluster or adding a new node to an existing cluster.
Aside from that, Elasticsearch uses a quorum-based election protocol and says the following:
To be sure that the cluster remains available you must not stop half or more of the nodes in the voting configuration at the same time.
You have stopped two of your three master-eligible nodes at the same time, which is more than half of them, so it's expected that the cluster no longer works.
The reference manual also contains instructions for removing master-eligible nodes which you have not followed:
As long as there are at least three master-eligible nodes in the cluster, as a general rule it is best to remove nodes one-at-a-time, allowing enough time for the cluster to automatically adjust the voting configuration and adapt the fault tolerance level to the new set of nodes.
If there are only two master-eligible nodes remaining then neither node can be safely removed since both are required to reliably make progress. To remove one of these nodes you must first inform Elasticsearch that it should not be part of the voting configuration, and that the voting power should instead be given to the other node.
It goes on to describe how to safely remove the unwanted nodes from the voting configuration using POST /_cluster/voting_config_exclusions/node_name when scaling down to a single node.
Cluster state which also stores the master configuration stores on the data folder of Elasticsearch node, In your case, it seems it is reading the old-cluster state(which is 3 master nodes, with their ids).
Could you delete the data folder of your master-a, so that it can start from a clean cluster state and it should resolve your issue.
Also make sure, other data and ingest node have master.node:false setting as by default it's true.

Rejoin separated data node to cluster

I have 3 nodes of elasticsearch all of them act as master-data node.
Due to connectivity issue one node leaves the cluster and promotes iteslf as master.Now i have two cluster first one with two nodes and other with one node. As all the nodes were under load balancer all nodes were receiving request from logstash.What will happen if i restart the single node cluster and try to add it back to the original cluster?
The problem that you are encountering is called split brain problem.
Here is a description of it
The problem comes in when a node falls down or there's simply a lapse
in communication between nodes for some reason. If one of the slave
nodes cannot communicate with the master node, it initiates the
election of a new master node from those it's still connected with.
That new master node then will take over the duties of the previous
master node. If the older master node rejoins the cluster or
communication is restored, the new master node will demote it to a
slave so there's no conflict. For the most part, this process is
seamless and "just works."
However, consider a scenario where you have just two nodes: one master
and one slave. If communication between the two is disrupted, the
slave will be promoted to a master, but once communication is
restored, you end up with two master nodes. The original master node
thinks the slave dropped and should rejoin as a slave, while the new
master thinks the original master dropped and should rejoin as a
slave. Your cluster, therefore, is said to have a split brain.
Reference link to it : https://qbox.io/blog/split-brain-problem-elasticsearch
To avoid this problem add this to your yml file on your master nodes : discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes: 2
The formulae for this is : Prevent the "split brain" by configuring the
majority of nodes (total number of master-eligible nodes / 2 + 1)

How to add a node for failover in Elasticsearch

I currently have single node for elasticsearch in a windows server. Can you please explain how to add one extra node for failover in different machine? I also wonder how two nodes can be kept identical using NEST.
Usually, you don't run a failover node, but run a cluster of nodes to provide High Availability.
A minimum topology of 3 master eligible nodes with minimum_master_nodes set to 2 and a sharding strategy that distributes primary and replica shards over nodes to provide data redundancy is the minimum viable topology I'd consider running in production.

Elasticsearch cluster discovery - Unicast hosts

I can't seem to find this in the docs.
When I specify discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts do I need to specify every node in the cluster? I'm hoping that I can specify a subset of the nodes, and the node will discover the cluster through whatever protocol they're using (gossip?). Will it use the discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts for master election, or will it use whatever state it's aware of?
No, it's enough to specify the master-eligible nodes. Since every node in the cluster should know the entire cluster setup (through the cluster state), a new node joining the cluster will "ask" the nodes from the discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts list to share the cluster state. From this it will learn of all other nodes' whereabouts.

How many master in three node cluster

I was stumbled at this question that how many masters can be there in a three node cluster. I came across this point in one of a article on internet that search and index requests are not to be sent to elected master. Is that correct? So , if i have three nodes acting as master(out of which one node is elected master) should i point out incoming logs to be indexed and searched onto other master nodes apart from elected master?Please clarify.Thanks in advance
In a three node cluster, all nodes most likely hold data and are master-eligible. That is the most simple situation in which you don't have to worry about anything else.
If you have a larger cluster, you can have a couple of nodes which are configured as dedicated master nodes. That is, they are master-eligible and they don't hold any data. For example you would have 3 dedicated master nodes and 7 data nodes (not master-eligible). Exactly one of the dedicated master nodes will always be the elected master.
The point is that since the dedicated master nodes don't hold data, they will not directly service index and search request. If you send an index or search request to them there's no other way for them than to delegate to one of the 7 data nodes.
From the Elasticsearch Reference for Modules - Node:
dedicated master nodes are nodes with the settings node.data: false
and node.master: true. We actively promote the use of dedicated master
nodes in critical clusters to make sure that there are 3 dedicated
nodes whose only role is to be master, a lightweight operational
(cluster management) responsibility. By reducing the amount of
resource intensive work that these nodes do (in other words, do not
send index or search requests to these dedicated master nodes), we
greatly reduce the chance of cluster instability.
A related question is how many master nodes there should be in a cluster. The answer essentially is at least 3 in order to prevent split-brain (a situation when due to a network error, two masters are elected simultaneously).
The Elasticsearch Guide has a section on Minimum Master Nodes, an excerpt:
When you have a split brain, your cluster is at danger of losing data.
Because the master is considered the supreme ruler of the cluster, it
decides when new indices can be created, how shards are moved, and so
forth. If you have two masters, data integrity becomes perilous, since
you have two nodes that think they are in charge.
This setting tells Elasticsearch to not elect a master unless there
are enough master-eligible nodes available. Only then will an election
take place.
This setting should always be configured to a quorum (majority) of
your master-eligible nodes. A quorum is (number of master-eligible
nodes / 2) + 1. Here are some examples:
If you have ten regular nodes (can hold data, can become master), a
quorum is 6.
If you have three dedicated master nodes and a hundred data nodes, the quorum is 2, since you need to count only nodes that are master eligible.
If you have two regular nodes, you are in a conundrum. A quorum would be 2, but this means a loss of one node will
make your cluster inoperable. A setting of 1 will allow your cluster
to function, but doesn’t protect against split brain. It is best to
have a minimum of three nodes in situations like this.

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