Multiple datacenter replication and local quorum? - cockroachdb

I created a cluster from 6 nodes.
3 nodes in Eu west1 and 3 nodes in EU west2
I set the locality for every group of nodes like : --locality=region=europe,datacenter=west1
I also set the replica to 6 to have all ranges and all data on every node.
What will happen if the connection between data centers is lost the whole cluster goes down ?
I tried to kill 3 nodes in one of the datacenters and cluster is not operational because the majority of the nodes are down and quorum is less that 4.
Is it possible to make the 2 datacentes to work with their local quorum 2/3
I also played a bit with replications settings and sometimes cluster is healthy if I kill 3 nodes from 6 and was I was able to write to the cluster. Sometimes I can only read from the cluster. Cluster is working with replica of 5 and 3 nodes killed from 6. Still paying with this but if someone can give me more information will be very helpful.
To be able to replicate across datacentes is very cool feature but if I lost the whole cluster when one of the datacenters is down ruin the whole good idea at least for me.

CockroachDB requires a majority of replicas to be fully operational, which means > half, not >= half. In order to survive the loss of a full datacenter or region, you must have three DCs/regions, not two. Try running two nodes in each of three regions instead of three nodes in two regions.
Is it possible to make the 2 datacenters to work with their local quorum 2/3
Not for a single table (because it would be impossible to guarantee consistency if each datacenter were able to act in isolation from the other). You've configured the data to be replicated across all six replicas, which means four replicas are required to make a quorum. If you want each datacenter to be able to operate independently of the other, you would need two separate tables, with each one configured to be located within one of the datacenters.

Thanks for the answer just to clear few thing. But looks like you got my point and what I want to accomplish.
But as far as I understand if I have 2x3 node in 2 different DC's if one DC goes down. I have 3 live nodes for the quorum I need at least 4 . N/2 +1.
So if I have 3x3 I can lost one DC because if I have 2 DC's live I will have a quorum .
And one last question if I don't set replication to 9 if I loose 3 nodes some in one DC some ranges will be not available right ?

Related

Number of nodes AWS Elasticsearch

I read documentation, but unfortunately I still don't understand one thing. While creating AWS Elasticsearch domain, I need to choose "Number of nodes" in "Data nodes" section.
If i specify 3 data nodes and 3-AZ, what it actually means?
I have suggestions:
I'll get 3 nodes with their own storages (EBS). One of node is master and other 2 are replicas in different AZ. Just copy of master, not to lose data if master node become broken.
I'll get 3 nodes with their own storages (EBS). All of them will work independent and on their storadges are different data. So at the same time data can be processed by different nodes and store on different storages.
It looks like in other AZ's should be replicas. but then I don't understand why I have different values of free space on different nodes
Please, explain how it works.
Many thanks for any info or links.
I haven't used AWS Elasticsearch, but I've used the Cloud Elasticsearch service.
When you use 3 AZ (availability zones), means that your cluster will use 3 zones in order to make it resilient. If one zone has problems, then the nodes in that zone will have problems as well.
As the description section mentions, you need to specify multiples of 3 if you choose 3 AZ. If you have 3 nodes, then every AZ will have one zone. If one zone has problems, then that node is out, the two remaining will have to pick up from there.
Now in order to answer your question. What do you get with these configurations. You can check so yourself. Use this via kibana or any HTTP client
GET _nodes
Check for the sections:
nodes.roles
nodes.attributes
In the various documentations, blog posts etc you will see that for production usage, 3 nodes and 3 AZ is a good starting point in order to have a resilient production cluster.
So let's take it step by step:
You need an even number of master nodes in order to avoid the split brain problem.
You need more than one node in your cluster in order to make it resilient (if the node is unavailable).
By combining these two you have the minimum requirement of 3 nodes (no mention of zones yet).
But having one master and two data nodes, will not cut it. You need to have 3 master-eligible nodes. So if you have one node that is out, the other two can still form a quorum and vote a new master, so your cluster will be operational with two nodes. But in order for this to work, you need to set your primary shards and replica shards in a way that any two of your nodes can hold your entire data.
Examples (for simplicity we have only one index):
1 primary, 2 replicas. Every node holds one shard which is 100% of the data
3 primaries, 1 replica. Every node will hold one primary and one replica (33% primary, 33% replica). Two nodes combined (which is the minimum to form a quorum as well) will hold all your data (and some more)
You can have more combinations but you get the idea.
As you can see, the shard configuration needs to go along with your number and type of nodes (master-eligible, data only etc).
Now, if you add the availability zones, you take care of the problem of one zone being problematic. If your cluster was as a whole in one zone (3 nodes in one node), then if that zone was problematic then your whole cluster is out.
If you set up one master node and two data nodes (which are not master eligible), having 3 AZ (or 3 nodes even) doesn't do much for resiliency, since if the master goes out, your cluster cannot elect a new one and it will be out until a master node is up again. Now for the same setup if a data node goes out, then if you have your shards configured in a way that there is redundancy (meaning that the two nodes remaining have all the data if combined), then it will work fine.
Your answers should be covered in following three points.
If i specify 3 data nodes and 3-AZ, what it actually means?
This means that your data and replica's will be available in 3AZs with none of the replica in same AZ as the data node. Check this link. For example, When you say you want 2 data nodes in 2 AZ. DN1 will be saved in (let's say) AZ1 and it's replica will be stored in AZ2. DN2 will be in AZ2 and it's replica will be in AZ1.
It looks like in other AZ's should be replicas. but then I don't understand why I have different values of free space on different nodes
It is because when you give your AWS Elasticsearch some amount of storage, the cluster divides the specified storage space in all data nodes. If you specify 100G of storage on the cluster with 2 data nodes, it divides the storage space equally on all data nodes i.e. two data nodes with 50G of available storage space on each.
Sometime you will see more nodes than you specified on the cluster. It took me a while to understand this behaviour. The reason behind this is when you update these configs on AWS ES, it takes some time to stabilize the cluster. So if you see more data or master nodes as expected hold on for a while and wait for it to stabilize.
Thanks everyone for help. To understand how much space available/allocated, run next queries:
GET /_cat/allocation?v
GET /_cat/indices?v
GET /_cat/shards?v
So, if i create 3 nodes, than I create 3 different nodes with separated storages, they are not replicas. Some data is stored in one node, some data in another.

From how many nodes do you need dedicated master nodes

A question. Is there any recommandation from how many nodes that you need to use dedicated master nodes in a elasticsearch cluster?
My setup:
4 nodes: for non critical data (32GB ram) each. Can be the master node 3
3 nodes: for critial data (16GB ram) each.
Does the master nodes need the same memory requirement as the data nodes?
At a time you can have only one master node, but for availability you should have more than one master elegible by setting node.master
The master node is the only node in a cluster that can make changes to the cluster state. This mean that if your master node is rebooted or down then you will not be able to make any changes to your cluster.
Well at some point it is a bit hard to what is right or best practice because it always depends on many parameters.
With your setup i would better go with 3 nodes and up to 64 GB of memory per each node, other wise you are loosing some hits on communication between your 7 servers while they are not utilizing 100% of resources. Then all 3 nodes must be able to become master and set
discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes: 2
This parameter is a bit important to avoid brain split when each node could become a master.
For you critical data you must use 1 replica to prevent lose of data.
Other option would be to make master only nodes and data only nodes.
So at some point minimum master nodes should be always 3 this will allow you to upgrade without downtime and make sure that you have always on setup.

Datastax Cassandra - Spanning Cluster node across amazon region

I planning to launch three EC2 instance across Amazon hosting region. For say, Region-A,Region-B and Region-C.
Based on the above plan, Each region act as Cluster(Or Datacenter) and have one node.(Correct me if I am wrong).
Using this infrastructure, Can I attain below configuration?
Replication Factor : 2
Write and Read Level:QUORUM.
My basic intention to do these are to achieve "If two region are went down, I can be survive with remaining one region".
Please help me with your inputs.
Note: I am very new to cassandra, hence whatever your inputs you are given will be useful for me.
Thanks
If you have a replication factor of 2 and use CL of Quorum, you will not tolerate failure i.e. if a node goes down, and you only get 1 ack - thats not a majority of responses.
If you deploy across multiple regions, each region is, as you mention, a DC in your Cluster. Each individual DC is a complete replica of all your data i.e. it will hold all the data for your keyspace. If you read/write at a LOCAL_* consistency (eg. LOCAL_ONE, LOCAL_QUORUM) level within each region, then you can tolerate the loss of the other regions.
The number of replicas in each DC/Region and the consistency level you are using to read/write in that DC will determine how much failure you can tolerate. If you are using QUORUM - this is a cross-DC consistency level. It will require a majority of acks from ALL replicas in your cluster in all DCs. If you loose 2 regions then its unlikely that you will be getting a quorum of responses.
Also, its worth remembering that Cassandra can be made aware of the AZ's it is deployed on in the Region and can do its best to ensure replicas of your data are placed in multiple AZs. This will give you even better tolerance to failure.
If this was me and I didnt need to have a strong cross-DC consistency level (like QUORUM). I would have 4 nodes in each region, deployed across each AZ and then a replication factor of 3 in each region. I would then be reading/writing at LOCAL_QUORUM or LOCAL_ONE (preferably). If you go with LOCAL_ONE than you could have fewer replicas in each DC e.g a replication factor of 2 with LOCAL_ONE means you could tolerate the loss of 1 replica.
However, this would be more expensive than what your initially suggesting but (for me) that would be the minimum setup I would need if I wanted to be in multiple regions and tolerate the loss of 2. You could go with 3 nodes in each region if you wanted to really save costs.

discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes value for a cluster of two nodes

I have two dedicated Windows Servers (Windows Server 2012R2, 128GB memory on each server) for ES (2.2.0). If I have one node on each server and the two nodes form a cluster. What is the proper value for
discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes
I read this general rule in elasticsearch.yml:
Prevent the "split brain" by configuring the majority of nodes (total
number of nodes / 2 + 1):
I saw this SO thread:
Proper value of ES_HEAP_SIZE for a dedicated machine with two nodes in a cluster
There is an answer saying:
As described in Elasticsearch Pre-Flight Checklist, you can set
discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes to at least (N/2)+1 on clusters
with N > 2 nodes.
Please note "N > 2". What is the proper value in my case?
N is the number of ES nodes (not physical machines but ES processes) that can be part of the cluster.
In your case, with one node on two machines, N = 2 (note that it was 4 here), so the formula N/2 + 1 yields 2, which means that both of your nodes MUST be eligible as master nodes if you want to prevent split brain situations.
If you set that value to 1 (which is the default value!) and you experience networking issues and both of your nodes can't see each other for a brief moment, each node will think it is alone in the cluster and both will elect themselves as master. You end up in a situation where you have two masters and that's not a good thing. Whereas if you set that value to 2 and you experience networking issues, the current master node will stay elected and the second node will never decide to elect itself as new master. Whenever network is back up, the second node will rejoin the cluster and continue serving requests.
The ideal topology is to have 3 dedicated master nodes (i.e. with master: true and data:false) and have discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes set to 2. That way you'll never have to change the setting whatever the number of data nodes are part of your cluster.
So the N > 2 constraint should indeed be N >= 2, but I guess it was somehow implied, because otherwise you're creating a fertile ground for split brain situations.
Interestingly, in ES 7 discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes is no longer need to be defined.
discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes value for a cluster of two nodes
https://www.elastic.co/blog/a-new-era-for-cluster-coordination-in-elasticsearch

Cassandra: 6 node cluster, RF=2: What to do when 2 nodes crash?

Good Day
We have a 6 node casssandra cluster witha replication factor of 3 on our keyspaces. Our applications make use of QUORUM so we can survive the loss of a single node wihtout it affecting the application.
Lets assume I lose 2 nodes at the same time. If my application was using consistency level of ONE then it would have been fine and my application would have run without any issues but we would like to keep the level at QUORUM.
My question is if 2 nodes crash at the same time and I do a nodetool removenode for each of the crashed nodes, will the cluster then rebalance the data over the remaining 4 nodes (and getting ir back to a 3 replica) and if done should my application then be able to work again usinng QUORUM?
In title you write RF=2, in text RF=3. You did not specify Cassandra version and if you are using single-token or vnodes. Quorum CL means, in a RF = 3 that 2 nodes must write/read before returning. It is possible that you face minimal issues/no issue even if 2 nodes dies, it depends on how many common ranges (partitions) the nodes shares.
Give a look at this distribution example that is exactly like the one you describe: RF3, 6 nodes.
using single tokens:
if you loose couples like (1,4) - (2,5) - (3,6) -- your cluster should allow all writes and reads, no issues. A good client will recognize nodes down and won't use them anymore as coordinators. Other situations, for example loss of nodes (1,6) might lead to a situation in which any r/w of F and E tokens will fail (assuming an equal distribution about 33% r/w operation will fail)
using vnodes:
here the situation is slightly different and also depends on couples you loose -- now if you repeat the worst scenario above -- you loose couple of nodes like (1,6) only B tokens will be affected in r/w operations since it's the only token shared between them.
Said that, just to clarify the possible scenarios, here's your answer. Nodetool removenode should be used like explained in this document. Use removenode IF AND ONLY IF you want reduce the cluster size (here what to do if you want replace a dead node). Once you did that your application will start working again using Quorum since other nodes will be responsible for partitions previously assigned to a dead node.
If you are using the official Datastax Java Driver you might want to let the driver temporary fight your monsters specifying a DowngradingConsistencyRetryPolicy
HTH,
Carlo

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