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Add proposal for store instance high availability (#404)
* Add proposal for store instance high availability The format of this proposal mirrors an existing draft proposal: #387 * Update HA store proposal based on feedback
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docs/proposals/201807_store_instance_high_availability.md
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# High-availability for store instances | ||
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Status: draft | **in-review** | rejected | accepted | complete | ||
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Proposal author: [@mattbostock](https://github.com/mattbostock) | ||
Implementation owner: [@mattbostock](https://github.com/mattbostock) | ||
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## Motivation | ||
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Thanos store instances currently have no explicit support for | ||
high-availability; query instances treat all store instances equally. If | ||
multiple store instances are used as gateways to a single bucket in an object | ||
store, Thanos query instances will wait for all instances to respond (subject | ||
to timeouts) before returning a response. | ||
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## Goals | ||
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- Explicitly support and document high availability for store instances. | ||
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- Reduce the query latency incurred by failing store instances when other store | ||
instances could return the same response faster. | ||
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## Proposal | ||
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Thanos supports deduplication of metrics retrieved from multiple Prometheus | ||
servers to avoid gaps in query responses where a single Prometheus server | ||
failed but similar data was recorded by another Prometheus server in the same | ||
failure domain. To support deduplication, Thanos must wait for all Thanos | ||
sidecar servers to return their data (subject to timeouts) before returning a | ||
response to a client. | ||
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When retrieving data from Thanos bucket store instances, however, the desired | ||
behaviour is different; we want Thanos use the first successful response it | ||
receives, on the assumption that all bucket store instances that communicate | ||
with the same bucket have access to the same data. | ||
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To support the desired behaviour for bucket store instances while still | ||
allowing for deduplication, we propose to expand the [InfoResponse | ||
Protobuf](https://github.com/improbable-eng/thanos/blob/b67aa3a709062be97215045f7488df67a9af2c66/pkg/store/storepb/rpc.proto#L28-L32) | ||
used by the Store API by adding two fields: | ||
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- a string identifier that can be used to group store instances | ||
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- an enum representing the [peer type as defined in the cluster | ||
package](https://github.com/improbable-eng/thanos/blob/673614d9310f3f90fdb4585ca6201496ff92c697/pkg/cluster/cluster.go#L51-L64) | ||
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For example; | ||
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```diff | ||
--- before 2018-07-02 15:49:09.000000000 +0100 | ||
+++ after 2018-07-02 15:49:13.000000000 +0100 | ||
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@ | ||
message InfoResponse { | ||
repeated Label labels = 1 [(gogoproto.nullable) = false]; | ||
int64 min_time = 2; | ||
int64 max_time = 3; | ||
+ string store_group_id = 4; | ||
+ enum PeerType { | ||
+ STORE = 0; | ||
+ SOURCE = 1; | ||
+ QUERY = 2; | ||
+ } | ||
+ PeerType peer_type = 5; | ||
} | ||
``` | ||
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For the purpose of querying data from store instances, stores instance will be | ||
grouped by: | ||
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- labels, as returned as part of `InfoResponse` | ||
- the new `store_group_id` string identifier | ||
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Therefore, stores having identical sets of labels and identical values for | ||
`store_group_id` will belong in the same group for the purpose of querying | ||
data. Stores having an empty `store_group_id` field and matching labels will be | ||
considered to be part of the same group. Stores having an empty | ||
`store_group_id` field and empty label sets will also be considered part of the | ||
same group. | ||
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If a service implementing the store API (a 'store instance') has a `STORE` or | ||
`QUERY` peer type, query instances will treat each store instance in the same | ||
group as having access to the same data. Query instances will randomly pick any | ||
two store instances[1][] from the same group and use the first response | ||
returned. | ||
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[1]: https://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/mythesis.pdf | ||
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Otherwise, for the `SOURCE` peer type, query instances will wait for all | ||
instances within the same group to respond (subject to existing timeouts) | ||
before returning a response, consistent with the current behaviour. This is | ||
necessary to collect all data available for the purposes of deduplication and | ||
to fill gaps in data where an individual Prometheus server failed to ingest | ||
data for a period of time. | ||
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Each service implementing the store API must determine what value the | ||
`store_group_id` should return. For bucket stores, `store_group_id` should | ||
contain the concatenation of the object store URL and bucket name. For all | ||
other existing services implementing the store API, we will use an empty string | ||
for `store_group_id` until a reason exists to use it. | ||
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Multiple buckets or object stores will be supported by setting the | ||
`store_group_id`. | ||
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Existing instances running older versions of Thanos will be assumed to have | ||
an empty string for `store_group_id` and a `SOURCE` peer type, which will | ||
retain existing behaviour when awaiting responses. | ||
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### Scope | ||
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Horizontal scaling should be handled separately and is out of scope for this | ||
proposal. | ||
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## User experience | ||
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From a user's point of view, query responses should be faster and more reliable: | ||
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- Running multiple bucket store instances will allow the query to be served even | ||
if a single store instance fails. | ||
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- Query latency should be lower since the response will be served from the | ||
first bucket store instance to reply. | ||
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The user experience for query responses involving only Thanos sidecars will be | ||
unaffected. | ||
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## Alternatives considered | ||
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### Implicitly relying on store labels | ||
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Rather than expanding the `InfoResponse` Protobuf, we had originally considered | ||
relying on an empty set of store labels to determine that a store instance was | ||
acting as a gateway. | ||
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We decided against this approach as it would make debugging harder due to its | ||
implicit nature, and is likely to cause bugs in future. | ||
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### Using boolean fields to determine query behaviour | ||
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We rejected the idea of adding a `gateway` or `deduplicated` boolean field to | ||
`InfoResponse` in the store RPC API. The value of these fields would have had | ||
the same effect on query behaviour as returning the peer type field as proposed | ||
above and would be more explicit, but were specific to this use case. | ||
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The peer type field in `InfoResponse` proposed above could be used for other | ||
use cases aside from determining query behaviour. | ||
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## Related future work | ||
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### Sharing data between store instances | ||
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Thanos bucket stores download index and metadata from the object store on | ||
start-up. If multiple instances of a bucket store are used to provide high | ||
availability, each instance will download the same files for its own use. These | ||
file sizes can be in the order of gigabytes. | ||
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Ideally, the overhead of each store instance downloading its own data would be | ||
avoided. We decided that it would be more appropriate to tackle sharing data as | ||
part of future work to support the horizontal scaling of store instances. |