ansible-cassandra

Ansible role to install an Apache Cassandra cluster supervised by systemd. Includes the following:

• Some OS tuning options such as installing jemalloc, setting max_map_count and tcp_keepalive, disabling swap.
• Bootstraps nodes using the IPs of the servers in the cassandra_seed (configurable) inventory group.
• Weekly scheduled repairs via cron jobs that are non-overlapping (see cassandra_repair_slots).
  • Note that all keyspaces will be scheduled for repairs
• Incremental and full backup scripts as well as a restore script. (disabled by default, optional) (NOTE: needs better testing)
  • backup/restore requires access to S3.
• prometheus-style metrics using jmx-exporter

Status: beta, see TODOs

• Ansible Requirements
• Role Variables
• Dependencies
• Platforms
• Example Playbook
• License
• A note on openjdk vs oracle:
• Development setup
• Credits
• TODO

Ansible Requirements

• ansible >= 2.4 (>= 2.7.9 recommended)

Role Variables

Give your cluster a better name:

# set cassandra_cluster_name before running the playbook for the first time; never change it afterwards
cassandra_cluster_name: default

You may wish to override the following defaults to enable backups:

# backups
cassandra_backup_enabled: false # recommended to enable this
cassandra_backup_s3_bucket: # set a name here and ensure hosts have access rights to an S3 bucket
cassandra_env: dev # used in naming backups in case you have more than one environment (e.g. production, staging, ...)

For a list of all variables, see defaults/main.yml.

Dependencies

The following should be installed before installing this role:

• Java 8 (openJDK or Oracle, see A note on openjdk vs oracle:)
• ntp

For the above dependencies, you can use the same roles as in molecule/default/requirements.yml - but you don't have to.

Platforms

• Currently tested with Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 (see A note on Java 8 and Ubuntu 18.04).

Example Playbook

Assuming an inventory with 5 nodes where you wish to install cassandra on, two of them seed nodes:

# hosts.ini
[all]
host01 ansible_host=<some IP>
host02 ansible_host=<some IP>
host03 ansible_host=<some IP>
host04 ansible_host=<some IP>
host05 ansible_host=<some IP>

[cassandra]
host01
host02
host03
host04
host05

# cassandra_seed group will be used to configure seed bootstrapping
# recommended is 2 seed nodes per datacenter
[cassandra_seed]
host01
host02

Then the following should work and start your cluster:

# playbook.yml

- hosts: cassandra
  vars:
    # set cluster_name before running the playbook for the first time; never change it afterwards
    cassandra_cluster_name: my_cluster
    # set installed java package version manually. required when using Ubuntu 18.04. see: [A note on Java 8 and Ubuntu 18.04](#a-note-on-Java-8-and-Ubuntu-18.04)
    java_packages: openjdk-8-jdk
  roles:
    # ensure to install java and ntp first, e.g. by running these roles (see Dependencies section):
    # - ansible-ntp
    # - ansible-role-java
    - ansible-cassandra

If you don't wish to configure cassandra seed nodes via a cassandra_seed_groupname (default: cassandra_seed) inventory group, you can configure them statically:

  vars:
    cassandra_seed_resolution: static
    cassandra_seeds:
      - 1.2.3.4
      - ...

License

AGPL. See LICENSE

A note on openjdk vs oracle:

As of November 2018, the cassandra homepage lists both openJDK and Oracle Java as supported (and offers their download links).

In the official upgrade-to-DSE docs one can find:

Important: Although Oracle JRE/JDK 8 is supported, DataStax does more extensive testing on OpenJDK 8 starting with DSE 6.0.3. This change is due to the end of public updates for Oracle JRE/JDK 8.)

It seems OpenJDK is the more future-proof JVM to use. This role is tested using openjdk.

A note on Java 8 and Ubuntu 18.04:

In order to deploy Java on Ubuntu using Ansible, we have been using the 'ansible-role-java' role. This role will install OpenJDK 11 on Ubuntu 18.04 by default. If you are using this role, it is required to set the 'java_packages' variable before running it. for example:

# set the java packages installed by the ansible-role-java role manually.
java_packages: openjdk-8-jdk

Development setup

Install molecule. E.g. ensure you have docker installed, then, using a virtualenv, pip install molecule ansible docker.

• molecule converge to run the playbook against docker containers. If something fails, molecule --debug converge shows error details.
• molecule lint and molecule syntax can be used to get feedback on your yaml changes.
• molecule test to destroy + converge + converge again for idempotence + destroy

If you want 'mocule converge' to be run each time you save a file in this repository, install entr, then run 'make'.

• troubleshooting: this issue has been observed with molecule, ansible 2.7 and docker. Workaround was to downgrade to ansible 2.5.

Credits

This role has been inspired by

• internal role used at Wire initially targeting older OSes and older cassandra versions.
• this cassandra role and its dependent roles (insufficient for our needs)

TODO

• WARN: JMX is not enabled to receive remote connections. Please see cassandra-env.sh for more info.
• test backups and restore
• document usage of prometheus .prom files and node-exporter
• check out if instead of cron jobs a repair alternative could be https://github.com/thelastpickle/cassandra-reaper