openstack-manuals/doc/ha-guide/source/intro-ha-arch-pacemaker.rst

The Pacemaker architecture

What is a cluster manager

At its core, a cluster is a distributed finite state machine capable of co-ordinating the startup and recovery of inter-related services across a set of machines.

Even a distributed and/or replicated application that is able to survive failures on one or more machines can benefit from a cluster manager:

1. Awareness of other applications in the stack

   While SYS-V init replacements like systemd can provide deterministic recovery of a complex stack of services, the recovery is limited to one machine and lacks the context of what is happening on other machines - context that is crucial to determine the difference between a local failure, clean startup and recovery after a total site failure.

2. Awareness of instances on other machines

   Services like RabbitMQ and Galera have complicated boot-up sequences that require co-ordination, and often serialization, of startup operations across all machines in the cluster. This is especially true after site-wide failure or shutdown where we must first determine the last machine to be active.

3. A shared implementation and calculation of quorum.

   It is very important that all members of the system share the same view of who their peers are and whether or not they are in the majority. Failure to do this leads very quickly to an internal split-brain state - where different parts of the system are pulling in different and incompatible directions.

4. Data integrity through fencing (a non-responsive process does not imply it is not doing anything)

   A single application does not have sufficient context to know the difference between failure of a machine and failure of the applcation on a machine. The usual practice is to assume the machine is dead and carry on, however this is highly risky - a rogue process or machine could still be responding to requests and generally causing havoc. The safer approach is to make use of remotely accessible power switches and/or network switches and SAN controllers to fence (isolate) the machine before continuing.

5. Automated recovery of failed instances

   While the application can still run after the failure of several instances, it may not have sufficient capacity to serve the required volume of requests. A cluster can automatically recover failed instances to prevent additional load induced failures.

For this reason, the use of a cluster manager like Pacemaker is highly recommended.

Deployment flavors

It is possible to deploy three different flavors of the Pacemaker architecture. The two extremes are Collapsed (where every component runs on every node) and Segregated (where every component runs in its own 3+ node cluster).

Regardless of which flavor you choose, it is recommended that the clusters contain at least three nodes so that we can take advantage of quorum.

Quorum becomes important when a failure causes the cluster to split in two or more partitions. In this situation, you want the majority to ensure the minority are truly dead (through fencing) and continue to host resources. For a two-node cluster, no side has the majority and you can end up in a situation where both sides fence each other, or both sides are running the same services - leading to data corruption.

Clusters with an even number of hosts suffer from similar issues - a single network failure could easily cause a N:N split where neither side retains a majority. For this reason, we recommend an odd number of cluster members when scaling up.

You can have up to 16 cluster members (this is currently limited by the ability of corosync to scale higher). In extreme cases, 32 and even up to 64 nodes could be possible, however, this is not well tested.

Collapsed

In this configuration, there is a single cluster of 3 or more nodes on which every component is running.

This scenario has the advantage of requiring far fewer, if more powerful, machines. Additionally, being part of a single cluster allows us to accurately model the ordering dependencies between components.

This scenario can be visualized as below.

You would choose this option if you prefer to have fewer but more powerful boxes.

This is the most common option and the one we document here.

Segregated

In this configuration, each service runs in a dedicated cluster of 3 or more nodes.

The benefits of this approach are the physical isolation between components and the ability to add capacity to specific components.

You would choose this option if you prefer to have more but less powerful boxes.

This scenario can be visualized as below, where each box below represents a cluster of three or more guests.

Mixed

It is also possible to follow a segregated approach for one or more components that are expected to be a bottleneck and use a collapsed approach for the remainder.

Proxy server

Almost all services in this stack benefit from being proxied. Using a proxy server provides:

1. Load distribution

   Many services can act in an active/active capacity, however, they usually require an external mechanism for distributing requests to one of the available instances. The proxy server can serve this role.

2. API isolation

   By sending all API access through the proxy, we can clearly identify service interdependencies. We can also move them to locations other than localhost to increase capacity if the need arises.

3. Simplified process for adding/removing of nodes

   Since all API access is directed to the proxy, adding or removing nodes has no impact on the configuration of other services. This can be very useful in upgrade scenarios where an entirely new set of machines can be configured and tested in isolation before telling the proxy to direct traffic there instead.

4. Enhanced failure detection

   The proxy can be configured as a secondary mechanism for detecting service failures. It can even be configured to look for nodes in a degraded state (such as being 'too far' behind in the replication) and take them out of circulation.

The following components are currently unable to benefit from the use of a proxy server:

• RabbitMQ
• Memcached
• MongoDB

However, the reasons vary and are discussed under each component's heading.

We recommend HAProxy as the load balancer, however, there are many alternatives in the marketplace.

We use a check interval of 1 second, however, the timeouts vary by service.

Generally, we use round-robin to distribute load amongst instances of active/active services, however, Galera uses the stick-table options to ensure that incoming connections to the virtual IP (VIP) should be directed to only one of the available back ends.

In Galera's case, although it can run active/active, this helps avoid lock contention and prevent deadlocks. It is used in combination with the httpchk option that ensures only nodes that are in sync with its peers are allowed to handle requests.