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Geo-Replication

Introduction

Geo-replication provides a continuous, asynchronous, and incremental replication service from one site to another over Local Area Networks (LANs), Wide Area Network (WANs), and across the Internet.

Prerequisites

  • Primary and Secondary Volumes should be Gluster Volumes.
  • Primary and Secondary clusters should have the same GlusterFS version.

Replicated Volumes vs Geo-replication

The following table lists the difference between replicated volumes and Geo-replication:

Replicated Volumes Geo-replication
Mirrors data across clusters Mirrors data across geographically distributed clusters
Provides high-availability Ensures backing up of data for disaster recovery
Synchronous replication (each and every file operation is sent across all the bricks) Asynchronous replication (checks for the changes in files periodically and syncs them on detecting differences)

Exploring Geo-replication Deployment Scenarios

Geo-replication provides an incremental replication service over Local Area Networks (LANs), Wide Area Network (WANs), and across the Internet.

This section illustrates the most common deployment scenarios for Geo-replication, including the following:

Geo-replication over Local Area Network(LAN)

geo-rep_lan

Geo-replication over Wide Area Network(WAN)

geo-rep_wan

Geo-replication over Internet

geo-rep03_internet

Mirror data in a cascading fashion across multiple sites(Multi-site cascading Geo-replication)

geo-rep04_cascading

Secondary User setup

Setup an unprivileged user in Secondary nodes to secure the SSH connectivity to those nodes. The unprivileged Secondary user uses the mountbroker service of glusterd to set up an auxiliary gluster mount for the user in a special environment, which ensures that the user is only allowed to access with special parameters that provide administrative level access to the particular Volume.

In all the Secondary nodes, create a new group as "geogroup".

sudo groupadd geogroup

In all the Secondary nodes, create an unprivileged account. For example, "geoaccount". Add geoaccount as a member of "geogroup" group.

useradd -G geogroup geoaccount

In any one Secondary node, run the following command to setup the mountbroker root directory and group.

gluster-mountbroker setup <MOUNT ROOT> <GROUP>

For example,

gluster-mountbroker setup /var/mountbroker-root geogroup

In any one of Secondary node, Run the following commands to add Volume and user to mountbroker service.

gluster-mountbroker add <VOLUME> <USER>

For example,

gluster-mountbroker add gvol-secondary geoaccount

(Note: To remove a user, use gluster-mountbroker remove command)

Check the status of setup using,

gluster-mountbroker status

Restart glusterd service on all Secondary nodes.

Setting Up the Environment for Geo-replication

Time Synchronization

On bricks of a geo-replication Primary volume, all the servers' time must be uniform. You are recommended to set up NTP (Network Time Protocol) or similar service to keep the bricks sync in time and avoid the out-of-time sync effect.

For example: In a Replicated volume where brick1 of the Primary is at 12.20 hrs, and brick 2 of the Primary is at 12.10 hrs with 10 minutes time lag, all the changes in brick2 between this period may go unnoticed during synchronization of files with Secondary.

Password-less SSH

Password-less login has to be set up between the host machine (where geo-replication Create command will be issued) and one of the Secondary node for the unprivileged account created above.

Note: This is required to run Create command. This can be disabled once the session is established.(Required again while running create force)

On one of the Primary node where geo-replication Create command will be issued, run the following command to generate the SSH key(Press Enter twice to avoid passphrase).

ssh-keygen

Run the following command on the same node to one Secondary node which is identified as the main Secondary node.

ssh-copy-id geoaccount@snode1.example.com

Creating secret pem pub file

Execute the below command from the node where you setup the password-less ssh to Secondary. This will generate Geo-rep session specific ssh-keys in all Primary peer nodes and collect public keys from all peer nodes to the command initiated node.

gluster-georep-sshkey generate

This command adds extra prefix inside common_secret.pem.pub file to each pub keys to prevent running extra commands using this key, to disable that prefix,

gluster-georep-sshkey generate --no-prefix

Creating the session

Create a geo-rep session between Primary and Secondary volume using the following command. The node in which this command is executed and the <Secondary_host> specified in the command should have password less ssh setup between them. The push-pem option actually uses the secret pem pub file created earlier and establishes geo-rep specific password less ssh between each node in Primary to each node of Secondary.

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> \
    create [ssh-port <port>] push-pem|no-verify [force]

For example,

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  create push-pem

If custom SSH port (example: 50022) is configured in Secondary nodes then

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary  \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  config ssh_port 50022

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary  \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  create ssh-port 50022 push-pem

If the total available size in Secondary volume is less than the total size of Primary, the command will throw error message. In such cases 'force' option can be used.

In use cases where the rsa-keys of nodes in Primary volume is distributed to Secondary nodes through an external agent and following Secondary side verifications are taken care of by the external agent, then

  • if ssh port 22 or custom port is open in Secondary
  • has proper passwordless ssh login setup
  • Secondary volume is created and is empty
  • if Secondary has enough memory

Then use following command to create Geo-rep session with no-verify option.

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> create no-verify [force]

For example,

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary  \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  create no-verify

In this case the Primary node rsa-key distribution to Secondary node does not happen and above mentioned Secondary verification is not performed and these two things has to be taken care externaly.

Post Creation steps

Run the following command as root in any one of Secondary node.

/usr/libexec/glusterfs/set_geo_rep_pem_keys.sh <secondary_user> \
    <primary_volume> <secondary_volume>

For example,

/usr/libexec/glusterfs/set_geo_rep_pem_keys.sh geoaccount \
  gvol-primary gvol-secondary

Configuration

Configuration can be changed anytime after creating the session. After successful configuration change, Geo-rep session will be automatically restarted.

To view all configured options of a session,

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> config [option]

For Example,

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary  \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  config

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary  \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  config sync-jobs

To configure Gluster Geo-replication, use the following command at the Gluster command line

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
   <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> config [option]

For example:

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary  \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  config sync-jobs 3

Note: If Geo-rep is in between sync, restart due to configuration change may cause resyncing a few entries which are already synced.

Configurable Options

Meta Volume

In case of Replica bricks, one brick worker will be Active and participate in syncing and others will be waiting as Passive. By default Geo-rep uses node-uuid, if node-uuid of worker present in first up subvolume node ids list then that worker will become Active. With this method, multiple workers of same replica becomes Active if multiple bricks used from same machine.

To prevent this, Meta Volume(Extra Gluster Volume) can be used in Geo-rep. With this method, Each worker will try to acquire lock on a file inside meta volume. Lock file name pattern will be different for each sub volume. If a worker acquire lock, then it will become Active else remain as Passive.

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> config
    use-meta-volume true

Note: Meta Volume is shared replica 3 Gluster Volume. The name of the meta-volume should be gluster_shared_storage and should be mounted at /var/run/gluster/shared_storage/.

The following table provides an overview of the configurable options for a geo-replication setting:

Option Description
log-level LOGFILELEVEL The log level for geo-replication.
gluster-log-level LOGFILELEVEL The log level for glusterfs processes.
changelog-log-level LOGFILELEVEL The log level for Changelog processes.
ssh-command COMMAND The SSH command to connect to the remote machine (the default is ssh). If ssh is installed in custom location, that path can be configured. For ex /usr/local/sbin/ssh
rsync-command COMMAND The rsync command to use for synchronizing the files (the default is rsync).
use-tarssh true The use-tarssh command allows tar over Secure Shell protocol. Use this option to handle workloads of files that have not undergone edits.
timeout SECONDS The timeout period in seconds.
sync-jobs N The number of simultaneous files/directories that can be synchronized.
ignore-deletes If this option is set to 1, a file deleted on the primary will not trigger a delete operation on the secondary. As a result, the secondary will remain as a superset of the primary and can be used to recover the primary in the event of a crash and/or accidental delete.

Starting Geo-replication

Use the following command to start geo-replication session,

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume>  \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> \
    start [force]

For example,

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary  \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  start

Note

You may need to configure the session before starting Gluster Geo-replication.

Stopping Geo-replication

Use the following command to stop geo-replication sesion,

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume>  \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> \
    stop [force]

For example,

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary  \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  stop

Status

To check the status of all Geo-replication sessions in the Cluster

gluster volume geo-replication status

To check the status of one session,

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> status [detail]

Example,

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary \
  geoaccount@snode1::gvol-secondary status

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary \
  geoaccount@snode1::gvol-secondary status detail

Example Status Output

PRIMARY NODE    PRIMARY VOL          PRIMARY BRICK    SECONDARY USER    SECONDARY         SECONDARY NODE    STATUS    CRAWL STATUS       LAST_SYNCED
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mnode1         gvol-primary           /bricks/b1      root          snode1::gvol-secondary  snode1        Active    Changelog Crawl    2016-10-12 23:07:13
mnode2         gvol-primary           /bricks/b2      root          snode1::gvol-secondary  snode2        Active    Changelog Crawl    2016-10-12 23:07:13

Example Status detail Output

PRIMARY NODE    PRIMARY VOL    PRIMARY BRICK    SECONDARY USER    SECONDARY        SECONDARY NODE    STATUS    CRAWL STATUS       LAST_SYNCED            ENTRY    DATA    META    FAILURES    CHECKPOINT TIME    CHECKPOINT COMPLETED    CHECKPOINT COMPLETION TIME
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mnode1         gvol-primary           /bricks/b1      root          snode1::gvol-secondary  snode1        Active    Changelog Crawl    2016-10-12 23:07:13    0        0       0       0           N/A                N/A                     N/A
mnode2         gvol-primary           /bricks/b2      root          snode1::gvol-secondary  snode2        Active    Changelog Crawl    2016-10-12 23:07:13    0        0       0       0           N/A                N/A                     N/A

The STATUS of the session could be one of the following,

  • Initializing: This is the initial phase of the Geo-replication session; it remains in this state for a minute in order to make sure no abnormalities are present.

  • Created: The geo-replication session is created, but not started.

  • Active: The gsync daemon in this node is active and syncing the data. (One worker among the replica pairs will be in Active state)

  • Passive: A replica pair of the active node. The data synchronization is handled by active node. Hence, this node does not sync any data. If Active node goes down, Passive worker will become Active

  • Faulty: The geo-replication session has experienced a problem, and the issue needs to be investigated further. Check log files for more details about the Faulty status. Log file path can be found using

    gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
        <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> config log-file
    
  • Stopped: The geo-replication session has stopped, but has not been deleted.

The CRAWL STATUS can be one of the following:

  • Hybrid Crawl: The gsyncd daemon is crawling the glusterFS file system and generating pseudo changelog to sync data. This crawl is used during initial sync and if Changelogs are not available.

  • History Crawl: gsyncd daemon syncs data by consuming Historical Changelogs. On every worker restart, Geo-rep uses this Crawl to process backlog Changelogs.

  • Changelog Crawl: The changelog translator has produced the changelog and that is being consumed by gsyncd daemon to sync data.

The ENTRY denotes: The number of pending entry operations (create, mkdir, mknod, symlink, link, rename, unlink, rmdir) per session.

The DATA denotes: The number of pending Data operations (write, writev, truncate, ftruncate) per session.

The META denotes: The number of pending Meta operations (setattr, fsetattr, setxattr, fsetxattr, removexattr, fremovexattr) per session.

The FAILURE denotes: The number of failures per session. On encountering failures, one can proceed to look at the log files.

Deleting the session

Established Geo-replication session can be deleted using the following command,

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> delete [force]

For example,

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary delete

Note: If the same session is created again then syncing will resume from where it was stopped before deleting the session. If the session to be deleted permanently then use reset-sync-time option with delete command. For example, gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary geoaccount@snode1::gvol-secondary delete reset-sync-time

Checkpoint

Using Checkpoint feature we can find the status of sync with respect to the Checkpoint time. Checkpoint completion status shows "Yes" once Geo-rep syncs all the data from that brick which are created or modified before the Checkpoint Time.

Set the Checkpoint using,

gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> config checkpoint now

Example,

gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary \
  geoaccount@snode1.example.com::gvol-secondary \
  config checkpoint now

Touch the Primary mount point to make sure Checkpoint completes even though no I/O happening in the Volume

mount -t glusterfs <primaryhost>:<primaryvol> /mnt
touch /mnt

Checkpoint status can be checked using Geo-rep status command. Following columns in status output gives more information about Checkpoint

  • CHECKPOINT TIME: Checkpoint Set Time
  • CHECKPOINT COMPLETED: Yes/No/NA, Status of Checkpoint
  • CHECKPOINT COMPLETION TIME: Checkpoint Completion Time if completed, else N/A

Log Files

Primary Log files are located in /var/log/glusterfs/geo-replication directory in each Primary nodes. Secondary log files are located in /var/log/glusterfs/geo-replication-secondary directory in Secondary nodes.

Gluster Snapshots and Geo-replicated Volumes

Gluster snapshot of Primary and Secondary should not go out of order on restore. So while taking snapshot take snapshot of both Primary and Secondary Volumes.

  • Pause the Geo-replication session using,

    gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
        <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> pause
    
  • Take Gluster Snapshot of Secondary Volume and Primary Volume(Use same name for snapshots)

    gluster snapshot create <snapname> <volname>
    

Example,

    gluster snapshot create snap1 gvol-secondary
    gluster snapshot create snap1 gvol-primary
  • Resume Geo-replication session using,
    gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
        <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> resume
    

If we want to continue Geo-rep session after snapshot restore, we need to restore both Primary and Secondary Volume and resume the Geo-replication session using force option

gluster snapshot restore <snapname>
gluster volume geo-replication <primary_volume> \
    <secondary_user>@<secondary_host>::<secondary_volume> resume force

Example,

gluster snapshot restore snap1 # Secondary Snap
gluster snapshot restore snap1 # Primary Snap
gluster volume geo-replication gvol-primary geoaccount@snode1::gvol-secondary \
  resume force