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# Year: 2017

## orchestrator 3.0.3: auto provisioning raft nodes, native Consul support and more

MySQL November 16, 2017November 16, 2017

orchestrator 3.0.3 is released! There’s been a lot going on since 3.0.2:

### orchestrator/raft: auto-provisioning nodes via lightweight snaphsots

In an orchestrator/raft setup, we have n hosts forming a `raft` cluster. In a 3-node setup, for example, one node can go down, and still the remaining two will form a consensus, keeping the service operational. What happens when the failed node returns?

With `3.0.3` the failed node can go down for as long as it wants. Once it comes back, it attempts to join the raft cluster. A node keeps its own snapshots and its raft log outside the relational backend DB. If it has recent-enough data, it just needs to catch up with raft replication log, which is acquires from one of the active nodes.

If its data is very stale, it will request a snapshot from an active node, which it will import, and will just resume from that point.

If its data is gone, that’s not a problem. It gets a snapshot from an active node, improts it, and keeps running from that point.

If it’s a newly provisioned box, that’s not a problem. It gets a snapshot from an active node, … etc.

- SQLite backed setups can just bootstrap new nodes. No need to dump+load or import any data.
  - Side effect: you may actually use `:memory:`, where SQLite does not persist any data to disk. Remember that the raft snapshots and replication log will cover you. The cheat is that the raft replication log itself is managed and persisted by an independent SQLite database.
- MySQL backed setups will still need to make sure `orchestrator` has the privileges to deploy itself.

More info in the docs.

This plays very nicely into the hands of `kubernetes`, which is on `orchestrator`‘s roadmap.

### Key Value, native Consul support (Zk TODO)

`orchestrator` now supports Key-Value stores built-in, and Consul in particular.

At this time the purpose of orchestrator KV is to support master discovery. `orchestrator` will write the identity of the master of each cluster to KV store. The user will use that information to apply changes to their infrastructure.

For example, the user will rely on Consul KV entries, written by `orchestrator`, to generate proxy config files via `consul-template`, such that traffic is directed via the proxy onto the correct master.

`orchestrator` supports:

- Manually writing identity of cluster’s master to KV store
  - e.g. ``orchestrator-client -c submit-masters-to-kv-stores -alias mycluster``
- Automatically updating master’s identify upon failover

Key-value pairs are in the form of ``–``. For example:

- Key is `main_cluster`
- Value is `my-db-0123.my.company.com:3306`

### Web UI improvements

Using the web UI, you can now: Continue reading » “orchestrator 3.0.3: auto provisioning raft nodes, native Consul support and more”

## gh-ost 1.0.42 released: JSON support, optimizations

MySQL gh-ost Open Source September 14, 2017September 15, 2017

gh-ost 1.0.42 is released and available for download.

### JSON

MySQL 5.7’s `JSON` data type is now supported.

There is a soft-limitation, that your `JSON` may not be part of your `PRIMARY KEY`. Currently this isn’t even supported by MySQL anyhow.

### Performance

Two noteworthy changes are:

- Client side prepared statements reduce network traffic and round trips to the server.
- Range query iteration avoids creating temporary tables and filesorting.

We’re not running benchmarks at this time to observe performance gains.

### 5.7

More tests validating `5.7` compatibility (at this time GitHub runs MySQL `5.7` in production).

### Ongoing

Many other changes included.

We are grateful for all community feedback in form of open Issues, Pull Requests and questions!

`gh-ost` is authored by GitHub. It is free and open source and is available under the MIT license.

### Speaking

In two weeks time, Jonah Berquist will present gh-ost: Triggerless, Painless, Trusted Online Schema Migrations at Percona Live, Dublin.

Tom Krouper and myself will present MySQL Infrastructure Testing Automation at GitHub, where, among other things, we describe how we test `gh-ost` in production.

## Speaking at Percona Live Dublin: keynote, orchestrator tutorial, MySQL testing automation

MySQL Open Source PerconaLive secondary Speaking September 13, 2017September 13, 2017

I’m looking forward to a busy Percona Live Dublin conference, delivering three talks. Chronologically, these are:

- Practical orchestrator tutorial
  Attend this 3 hour tutorial for a thorough overview on orchestrator: what, why, how to configure, best advice, deployments, failovers, security, high availability, common operations, …
  We will of course discuss the new orchestrator/raft setup and share our experience running it in production.
  The tutorial will allow for general questions from the audience and open discussions.
- Why Open Sourcing Our Database Tooling was the Smart Decision
  What it says. A 10 minute journey advocating for open sourcing infrastructure.
- MySQL Infrastructure Testing Automation at GitHub
  Co-presenting with Tom Krouper, we share how & why we run infrastructure tests in and near production that gives us trust in many of our ongoing, ever changing operations. Essentially this is “why you should feel OK trusting us with your data”.

See you there!

## orchestrator 3.0.2 GA released: raft consensus, SQLite

MySQL Open Source orchestrator September 12, 2017September 12, 2017

orchestrator 3.0.2 GA is released and available for download (see also packagecloud repository).

`3.0.2` is the first stable release in the `3.0*` series, introducing (recap from 3.0 pre-release announcement):

### orchestrator/raft

Raft is a consensus protocol, supporting leader election and consensus across a distributed system. In an `orchestrator/raft` setup `orchestrator` nodes talk to each other via raft protocol, form consensus and elect a leader. Each `orchestrator` node has its own dedicated backend database. The backend databases do not speak to each other; only the `orchestrator` nodes speak to each other.

No MySQL replication setup needed; the backend DBs act as standalone servers. In fact, the backend server doesn’t have to be MySQL, and `SQLite`is supported. `orchestrator` now ships with `SQLite` embedded, no external dependency needed.

For details, please refer to the documentation:

- orchestrator/raft: overview
- orchestrator/raft vs. shared backend DB setup, comparison

### SQLite

Suggested and requested by many, is to remove `orchestrator`‘s own dependency on a MySQL backend. `orchestrator` now supports a SQLite backend.

`SQLite` is a transactional, relational, embedded database, and as of `3.0` it is embedded within `orchestrator`, no external dependency required.

### orchestrator-client

orchestrator-client is a client shell script which mimics the command line interface, while running `curl | jq` requests against the HTTP API. It stands to simplify your deployments: interacting with the orchestrator service via `orchestrator-client` is easier and only requires you to place a shell script (this is as opposed to installing the `orchestrator` binary + configuration file).

`orchestrator-client` is the way to interact with your `orchestrator/raft` cluster. `orchestrator-client` now has its own `RPM/deb` release package.

You may still use the web interface, web API ; and a special `--ignore-raft-setup` keeps power at your hand (use at your own risk).

### State of orchestrator/raft

`orchestrator/raft` is a big change: Continue reading » “orchestrator 3.0.2 GA released: raft consensus, SQLite”

## Remembering Jaakko Pesonen

MySQL community secondary September 9, 2017

I was sorrowed to hear that Jaakko Pesonen has passed away after battling cancer.

I first met Jaakko a few years back, during a Percona Live conference, and as community goes, our paths crossed again a few times. He spoke at and attended conferences where we’d have casual chats.

We were both expats in the Netherlands for a period. As I moved in from Israel, he was already working at Spil Games, having relocated from Finland, his home country. We shared expat experiences and longings to our homes. One day he pinged me that he was planning a trip to Israel – and the next few days were all about planning the best culinary experience of his travel (he approved of the results).

He was happy for the opportunity to work for Percona, as this allowed him to move back home to Finland.

Jaakko had the biggest, widest, most consuming smile, and this smile will sure be the most vivid memory of him that I’ll keep.

> I do not have personal pictures of Jaakko. This picture was taken by Julian Cash at Percona Live. A rare non-smiling appearance.

## Speaking at August Penguin, MySQL Track, GitHub sponsored

MySQL gh-ost GitHub Open Source orchestrator Speaking September 3, 2017September 3, 2017

This Thursday I’ll be presenting at August Penguin, conveniently taking place September 7th, 8th, Ramat Gan, Israel.

I will be speaking as part of the MySQL track, 2nd half of Thursday. The (Hebrew) schedule is here.

My talk is titled Reliable failovers, safe schema migrations: open source solutions to MySQL problems. I will describe some of the open source MySQL infrastructure work we run at GitHub ; how it solves reliability, availability and usability. I’ll describe some of our internal workflows and our use of chat and chatops.

I’m proud to announce GitHub sponsors the event. We won’t have a booth, but please do grab me in the hallways or over lunch to chat!

And, yes, octocat stickers will be made available 🙂

## orchestrator/raft: Pre-Release 3.0

MySQL Failover High availability Open Source orchestrator raft Replication August 3, 2017August 3, 2017

`orchestrator` 3.0 Pre-Release is now available. Most notable are Raft consensus, SQLite backend support, orchestrator-client no-binary-required client script.

### TL;DR

You may now set up high availability for `orchestrator` via `raft` consensus, without need to set up high availability for `orchestrator`‘s backend MySQL servers (such as Galera/InnoDB Cluster). In fact, you can run a `orchestrator/raft` setup using embedded `SQLite` backend DB. Read on.

`orchestrator` still supports the existing shared backend DB paradigm; nothing dramatic changes if you upgrade to 3.0 and do not configure `raft`.

### orchestrator/raft

Raft is a consensus protocol, supporting leader election and consensus across a distributed system. In an `orchestrator/raft` setup `orchestrator` nodes talk to each other via raft protocol, form consensus and elect a leader. Each `orchestrator` node has its own dedicated backend database. The backend databases do not speak to each other; only the `orchestrator` nodes speak to each other.

No MySQL replication setup needed; the backend DBs act as standalone servers. In fact, the backend server doesn’t have to be MySQL, and `SQLite` is supported. `orchestrator` now ships with `SQLite` embedded, no external dependency needed. Continue reading » “orchestrator/raft: Pre-Release 3.0”

## What’s so complicated about a master failover?

MySQL High availability orchestrator Replication June 29, 2017

The more work on orchestrator, the more user input and the more production experience, the more insights I get into MySQL master recoveries. I’d like to share the complexities in correctly running general-purpose master failovers; from picking up the right candidates to finalizing the promotion.

The TL;DR is: we’re often unaware of just how things can turn at the time of failover, and the impact of every single decision we make. Different environments have different requirements, and different users wish to have different policies. Understanding the scenarios can help you make the right choice.

The scenarios and considerations below are ones I picked while browsing through the `orchestrator` code and through Issues and questions. There are more. There are always more scenarios.

I discuss “normal replication” scenarios below; some of these will apply to synchronous replication setups (Galera, XtraDB Cluster, InnoDB Cluster) where using cross DC, where using intermediate masters, where working in an evolving environment.

`orchestrator`-wise, please refer to “MySQL High Availability tools” followup, the missing piece: orchestrator, an earlier post. Some notions from that post are re-iterated here. Continue reading » “What’s so complicated about a master failover?”

## Observations on the hashicorp/raft library, and notes on RDBMS

Development MySQL freno golang MySQL orchestrator raft June 20, 2017

The hashicorp/raft library is a Go library to provide consensus via Raft protocol implementation. It is the underlying library behind Hashicorp’s Consul.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with this library a couple projects, namely freno and orchestrator. Here are a few observations on working with this library:

- TL;DR on Raft: a group communication protocol; multiple nodes communicate, elect a leader. A leader leads a consensus (any subgroup of more than half the nodes of the original group, or hopefully all of them). Nodes may leave and rejoin, and will remain consistent with consensus.
- The hashicorp/raft library is an implementation of the Raft protocol. There are other implementations, and different implementations support different features.
- The most basic premise is leader election. This is pretty straightforward to implement; you set up nodes to communicate to each other, and they elect a leader. You may query for the leader identity via Leader(), VerifyLeader(), or observing LeaderCh.
- You have no control over the identity of the leader. You cannot “prefer” one node to be the leader. You cannot grab leadership from an elected leader, and you cannot demote a leader unless by killing it.
- The next premise is gossip, sending messages between the raft nodes. With `hashicorp/raft`, only the leader may send messages to the group. This is done via the Apply() function.
- Messages are nothing but blobs. Your app encodes the messages into `[]byte` and ships it via raft. Receiving ends need to decode the bytes into a meaningful message.
- You will check the result of Apply(), an ApplyFuture. The call to Error() will wait for consensus.
- Just what is a message consensus? It’s a guarantee that the consensus of nodes has received and registered the message.
- Messages form the raft log.
- Messages are guaranteed to be handled in-order across all nodes.
- The leader is satisfied when the followers receive the messages/log, but it cares not for their interpretation of the log.
- The leader does not collect the output, or return value, of the followers applying of the log.
- Consequently, your followers may not abort the message. They may not cast an opinion. They must adhere to the instruction received from the leader.
- `hashicorp/raft` uses either an LMDB-based store or BoltDB for persisting your messages. Both are transactional stores.
- Messages are expected to be idempotent: a node that, say, happens to restart, will request to join back the consensus (or to form a consensus with some other node). To do that, it will have to reapply historical messages that it may have applied in the past.
- Number of messages (log entries) will grow infinitely. Snapshots are taken so as to truncate the log history. You will implement the snapshot dump & load.
- A snapshot includes the log index up to which it covers.
- Upon startup, your node will look for the most recent snapshot. It will read it, then resume replication from the aforementioned log index.
- `hashicorp/raft` provides a file-system based snapshot implementation.

One of my use cases is completely satisfied with the existing implementations of `BoltDB` and of the filesystem snapshot.

However in another (`orchestrator`), my app stores its state in a relational backend. To that effect, I’ve modified the logstore and snapshot store. I’m using either MySQL or `sqlite` as backend stores for my app. How does that affect my `raft` use? Continue reading » “Observations on the hashicorp/raft library, and notes on RDBMS”

## Practical Orchestrator, BoF, GitHub and other talks at Percona Live 2017

MySQL GitHub orchestrator PerconaLive April 19, 2017April 19, 2017

Next week I will be presenting Practical Orchestrator at Percona Live, Santa Clara.

As opposed to previous `orchestrator` talks I gave, and which were either high level or algorithmic talks, Practical Orchestrator will be, well… practical.

The objective for this talk is that attendees leave the classroom with a good grasp of `orchestrator`‘s powers, and know how to set up `orchestrator` in their environment.

We will walk through discovery, refactoring, recovery, HA. I will walk through the most important configuration settings, share advice on what makes a good deployment, and tell you how we and others run `orchestrator`. We’ll present a few scripting/automation examples. We will literally set up `orchestrator` on my computer.

It’s a 50 minute talk and it will be fast paced!

### ProxySQL & Orchestrator BoF

ProxySQL is all the rage, and throughout the past 18 months René Cannaò and myself discussed a few times the potential for integration between ProxySQL and Orchestrator. We’ve also received several requests from the community.

We will run a BoF, a very informal session where we openly discuss our thoughts on possible integration, what makes sense and what doesn’t, and above all else would love to hear the attendees’ thoughts. We might come out of this session with some plan to pick low hanging fruit, who knows?

The current link to the BoF sessions is this. It seems terribly broken, and hopefully I’ll replace it later on.

### GitHub talks

GitHub engineers will further present these talks: Continue reading » “Practical Orchestrator, BoF, GitHub and other talks at Percona Live 2017”