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Controlling Fault Domains

The operator provides multiple options for defining fault domains for your cluster. The fault domain defines how data is replicated and how processes and coordinators are distributed across machines. Choosing a fault domain is an important process of managing your deployments.

Fault domains are controlled through the faultDomain field in the cluster spec.

Option 1: Single-Kubernetes Replication

If the faultDomain field is not specified then the following configuration is always used:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  faultDomain:
    key: kubernetes.io/hostname
    valueFrom: spec.nodeName

This configuration will set the fdbmonitor configuration for all processes to use the value from spec.nodeName on the pod as the zoneid locality field:

[fdbserver.1]
locality_zoneid = $FDB_ZONE_ID

Operator will replicate pods across nodes using a preferred pod anti-affinity rule (preferredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution) which discourages running multiple pods of the same process class on the same node, for any given cluster.

Overriding pod anti-affinity

You can override the pod anti-affinity rules generated by operator by specifying one in the pod spec template (either general or for a specific class), for example to implement requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  processes:
    storage:
      podTemplate:
        spec:
          podAntiAffinity:
            requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
              - topologyKey: kubernetes.io/hostname
                labelSelector:
                  matchLabels:
                    foundationdb.org/fdb-cluster-name: sample-cluster
                    foundationdb.org/fdb-process-class: storage

This example would replicate storage pods across nodes and enforce that there are never 2 or more pods scheduled on same node.

Using kubernetes failure zones

There is no clear pattern in Kubernetes for allowing pods to access node information other than the host name, which presents challenges using any other kind of fault domain. If you have some other mechanism to make this information available in your pod's environment, you can tell the operator to use an environment variable as the source for the zone locality:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  faultDomain:
    key: topology.kubernetes.io/zone
    valueFrom: $RACK

If you specify this RACK variable in the cluster spec.sidecarVariables then it will set the zoneid locality to whatever is in the RACK environment variable for the containers providing the monitor conf, which are foundationdb-kubernetes-init and foundationdb-kubernetes-sidecar. For ideas on how to inject environment variables, see ADDITIONAL_ENV_FILE in Warnings.

Option 2: Multi-Kubernetes Replication

Our second strategy is to run multiple Kubernetes cluster, each as its own fault domain. This strategy adds significant operational complexity, but may allow you to have stronger fault domains and thus more reliable deployments. You can enable this strategy by using a special key in the fault domain:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  processGroupIDPrefix: zone2
  faultDomain:
    key: foundationdb.org/kubernetes-cluster
    value: zone2
    zoneIndex: 2
    zoneCount: 5

This tells the operator to use the value "zone2" as the fault domain for every process it creates. The zoneIndex and zoneCount tell the operator where this fault domain is within the list of Kubernetes clusters (KCs) you are using in this DC. This is used to divide processes across fault domains. For instance, this configuration has 7 stateless processes, which need to be divided across 5 fault domains. The zones with zoneIndex 1 and 2 will allocate 2 stateless processes each. The zones with zoneIndex 3, 4, and 5 will allocate 1 stateless process each.

When running across multiple KCs, you will need to apply more care in managing the configurations to make sure all the KCs converge on the same view of the desired configuration. You will likely need some kind of external, global system to store the canonical configuration and push it out to all of your KCs. You will also need to make sure that the different KCs are not fighting each other to control the database configuration.

You must always specify an processGroupIDPrefix when deploying an FDB cluster to multiple Kubernetes clusters. You must set it to a different value in each Kubernetes cluster. This will prevent process group ID duplicates in the different Kubernetes clusters.

Option 3: Fake Replication

In local test environments, you may not have any real fault domains to use, and may not care about availability. You can test in this environment while still having replication enabled by using fake fault domains:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  faultDomain:
    key: foundationdb.org/none

This strategy uses the pod name as the fault domain, which allows each process to act as a separate failure domain. Any hardware failure could lead to a complete loss of the cluster. This configuration should not be used in any production environment.

Three-Data-Hall Replication

NOTE: The support for this redundancy mode is new and might have issues. Please make sure you test this configuration in your test/QA environment. The three-data-hall replication can be used to replicate data across three data halls, or availability zones. This requires that your fault domains are properly labeled on the Kubernetes nodes. Most cloud-providers will use the well-known label topology.kubernetes.io/zone for this. When creating a three-data-hall replicated FoundationDBCluster on Kubernetes we have to create 3 FoundationDBCluster resources. NOTE: This is a limitation of the current approach not to read any information from the Kubernetes nodes and simplify the scheduling logic of the operator. In the future, this might change and the deployment model for a three-data-hall FoundationDB cluster will be simplified.

We have to start with a simple FoundationDBCluster that is running in one single availability zone, e.g. az1:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster-az1
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  spec:
    processGroupIDPrefix: az1
    dataHall: az1
    databaseConfiguration:
      redundancyMode: triple
    processes:
      general:
        podTemplate:
          spec:
            nodeSelector:
              "topology.kubernetes.io/zone": "az1"

Once the cluster in az1 is reconciled and running we can change the redundancyMode to three_data_hall. For the other two created FoundationDBCluster resources you have to set the seedConnectionString to the current connection string of the FoundationDBCluster resource in az1. The cluster will be stuck in a reconciling state until the other two FoundationDBClusters's in az2 and az3 are created:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster-az1
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  spec:
    dataHall: az1
    processGroupIDPrefix: az1
    databaseConfiguration:
      redundancyMode: three_data_hall
    seedConnectionString: ""
    processes:
      general:
        podTemplate:
          spec:
            nodeSelector:
              "topology.kubernetes.io/zone": "az1"

Once all three FoundationDBCluster resources are marked as reconciled the FoundationDB cluster is up and running. You can run this configuration in the same namespace, different namespaces or even across multiple different Kubernetes clusters. Operations across the different FoundationDBCluster resources are coordinated.

Multi-Region Replication

The replication strategies above all describe how data is replicated within a data center or a single region. They control the zoneid field in the cluster's locality. If you want to run a cluster across multiple data centers or regions, you can use FoundationDB's multi-region replication. This can work with any of the replication strategies above. The data center will be a separate fault domain from whatever you provide for the zone.

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  dataCenter: dc1
  databaseConfiguration:
    regions:
      - datacenters:
          - id: dc1
            priority: 1
          - id: dc2
            priority: 1
            satellite: 1
      - datacenters:
          - id: dc3
            priority: 0
          - id: dc4
            priority: 1
            satellite: 1

The dataCenter field in the top level of the spec specifies what data center these process groups are running in. This will be used to set the dcid locality field. The regions section of the database describes all of the available regions. See the FoundationDB documentation for more information on how to configure regions.

Replicating across data centers will likely mean running your cluster across multiple Kubernetes clusters, even if you are using a single-Kubernetes replication strategy within each DC. This will mean taking on the operational challenges described in the "Multi-Kubernetes Replication" section above.

An example on how to setup a multi-region FDB cluster with the operator can be found in multi-dc. If you want to do an experiment locally with Kind you can use the setup_e2e.sh script. Basically the example is performing the following steps:

Create a single DC FDB cluster:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  dataCenter: dc1
  # Using the processGroupIDPrefix will prevent name conflicts.
  processGroupIDPrefix: dc1
  databaseConfiguration:
    regions:
      - datacenters:
          - id: dc1
            priority: 1

Once the cluster is fully reconciled you can create the FDB clusters in the other DCs, now with the full configuration and a seedConnectionString:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  version: 7.1.26
  dataCenter: dc1
  processGroupIDPrefix: dc1
  seedConnectionString: # Replace with the value from the initial single DC cluster
  databaseConfiguration:
    regions:
      - datacenters:
          - id: dc1
            priority: 1
          - id: dc2
            priority: 1
            satellite: 1
      - datacenters:
          - id: dc3
            priority: 0
          - id: dc4
            priority: 1
            satellite: 1

Coordinating Global Operations

When running a FoundationDB cluster that is deployed across multiple Kubernetes clusters, each Kubernetes cluster will have its own instance of the operator working on the processes in its cluster. There will be some operations that cannot be scoped to a single Kubernetes cluster, such as changing the database configuration. The operator provides a locking system to reduce the risk of those independent operator instance performing the same action at the same time. All actions that the operator performs like changing the configuration or restarting processes will lead to the same desired state. The locking system is only intended to reduce the risk of frequent reoccurring recoveries.

You can enable this locking system by setting lockOptions.disableLocks = false in the cluster spec. The locking system is automatically enabled by default for any cluster that has multiple regions in its database configuration, a zoneCount greater than 1 in its fault domain configuration, or redundancyMode equal to three_data_hall.

The locking system uses the processGroupIDPrefix from the cluster spec to identify an process group of the operator. Make sure to set this to a unique value for each Kubernetes cluster, both to support the locking system and to prevent duplicate process group IDs.

This locking system uses the FoundationDB cluster as its data source. This means that if the cluster is unavailable, no instance of the operator will be able to get a lock. If you hit a case where this becomes an issue, you can disable the locking system by setting lockOptions.disableLocks = true in the cluster spec.

In most cases, restarts will be done independently in each Kubernetes cluster, and the locking system will be used to try to ensure a minimum time between the different restarts and avoid multiple recoveries in a short span of time. During upgrades, however, all instances must be restarted at the same time. The operator will use the locking system to coordinate this. Each instance of the operator will store records indicating what processes it is managing and what version they will be running after the restart. Each instance will then try to acquire a lock and confirm that every process reporting to the cluster is ready for the upgrade. If all processes are prepared, the operator will restart all of them at once. If any instance of the operator is stuck and unable to prepare its processes for the upgrade, the restart will not occur.g

Deny List

There are some situations where an instance of the operator is able to get locks but should not be trusted to perform global actions. For instance, the operator could be partitioned in a way where it cannot access the Kubernetes API but can access the FoundationDB cluster. To block such an instance from taking locks, you can add it to the denyList in the lock options. You can set this in the cluster spec on any Kubernetes cluster.

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  processGroupIDPrefix: dc1
  lockOptions:
    denyList:
      - id: dc2

This will clear any locks held by dc2, and prevent it from taking further locks. In order to clear this deny list, you must change it to allow that instance again:

apiVersion: apps.foundationdb.org/v1beta2
kind: FoundationDBCluster
metadata:
  name: sample-cluster
spec:
  processGroupIDPrefix: dc1
  lockOptions:
    denyList:
      - id: dc2
        allow: true

Once that change is fully reconciled, you can clear the deny list from the spec.

Managing Disruption

Pod disruption budgets are a good idea to prevent simultaneous disruption to many components in a cluster, particularly during the upgrade of nodepools in public clouds. The operator does not yet create these automatically. To aid in creation of PDBs the operator preferentially selects coordinators from just storage pods, then if there are not enough storage pods, or the storage pods are not spread across enough fault domains it also considers log pods, and finally transaction pods as well.

Coordinators

Per default the FDB operator will try to select the best fitting processes to be coordinators. Depending on the requirements the operator can be configured to either prefer or exclude specific processes. The number of coordinators is currently a hardcoded mechanism based on the following algorithm:

// DesiredCoordinatorCount returns the number of coordinators to recruit for a cluster.
func (cluster *FoundationDBCluster) DesiredCoordinatorCount() int {
    if cluster.Spec.DatabaseConfiguration.UsableRegions > 1 || cluster.Spec.DatabaseConfiguration.RedundancyMode == RedundancyModeThreeDataHall {
        return 9
    }

    return cluster.MinimumFaultDomains() + cluster.DesiredFaultTolerance()
}

For all clusters that use more than one region or uses three_data_hall, the operator will recruit 9 coordinators. If the number of regions is 1 the number of recruited coordinators depends on the redundancy mode. The number of coordinators is chosen based on the fact that the coordinators use a consensus protocol (Paxos) that needs a majority of processes to be up. A common pattern in majority based system is to run n * 2 + 1 processes, where n defines the failures that should be tolerated. The FoundationDB document has more information about choosing coordination servers.

Redundancy mode # Coordinators
Single 1
Double (default) 3
Triple 5

Every coordinator must be in a different zone. That means for Triple replication you need at least 5 different Kubernetes nodes with the default fault domain. Losing one Kubernetes node will lead to have only 4 coordinators since the operator can't recruit another 5th coordinator across different zones.

Coordinator selection

The operator offers a flexible way to select different process classes to be eligible for coordinator selection. Per default the operator will choose all stateful processes classes e.g. storage, log and transaction. In order to get a deterministic result the operator will sort the candidate by priority (per default all have the same priority) and then by the instance-id.

If you want to modify the selection process you can add a coordinatorSelection in the FoundationDBCluster spec:

spec:
coordinatorSelection:
- priority: 0
  processClass: log
- priority: 10
  processClass: storage

Only process classes defined in the coordinatorSelection will be considered as possible candidates. In this example only processes with the class log or storage will be used for coordinators. The priority defines if a specific process class should be preferred to another. In this example the processes with the class storage will be preferred over processes with the class log. That means that a log process will only be considered a valid coordinator if there are no other storage processes that can be selected without hurting the fault domain requirements. Changing the coordinatorSelection can result in new coordinators e.g. if the current preferred class will be removed.

The operator supports the following classes as coordinators:

  • storage
  • log
  • transaction
  • coordinator

Known limitations

FoundationDB clusters that are spread across different DC's or Kubernetes clusters only support the same coordinatorSelection. The reason behind this is that the coordinator selection is a global process and different coordinatorSelection of the FoundationDBCluster resources can lead to an undefined behaviour or in the worst case flapping coordinators.

Next

You can continue on to the next section or go back to the table of contents.