Clustering

An implementation guide for using the Replicated built in clustering functionality.

This content is associated with a legacy version of the Replicated product. For the current Replicated product docs, click here.

By default Replicated will start one instance per component and container in your application on a single host. With the addition of clustering your application can optionally leverage multiple hosts as well as multiple instances per host.

See an example of setting up a Cassandra Cluster with Replicated here

Host Count

The application can be scaled horizontally at the component level by specifying host counts using the cluster_host_count property. The cluster property is required to enable this feature. When clustering is enabled, all containers that are members of the respective component will be allocated across the cluster to a minimum of min nodes and a maximum of max or 0 for unlimited.

components:
- name: App
  cluster: true
  cluster_host_count:
    min: 2
    max: 4
  ...

In the example above, a minimum of 2 hosts will be required for the application to start. Replicated will start a single instance for each container that is a member of the App component on a minimum of 2 (and up to 4 hosts) as nodes are added to the cluster.

Tags

In addition to specifying counts, components can be tagged for more powerful orchestration on multi-host installations. Nodes within the cluster must be tagged at runtime, allowing the customer to specify where each component of the application will be deployed across the cluster. Components can also be tagged with conflicting tags. Replicated will prevent conflicting components from being allocated on the same node.

components:
- name: App
  tags:
  - app
  conflicts:
  - lb
  cluster: true
  ...

Instance Count

Replicated can also vertically scale the application on a single host at the container level by specifying instance counts using the cluster_instance_count property. The cluster property is required to enable this feature.

components:
- name: App
  ...
  cluster_host_count:
    min: 2
  containers:
  - source: public
    image_name: freighter/worker
    ...
    cluster: true
    cluster_instance_count:
      initial: 3

In the example above at least 2 hosts are required. 3 instances of the freighter/worker container will be started on each of these 2 hosts.

NOTE: When cluster_instance_count.initial is greater than one and a port.public_port_initial is exposed explicitly on the host, Replicated will bind the full range of ports from port.public_port_initial to port.public_port_initial + (cluster_instance_count.initial - 1). The ContainerExposedPortAll template function can be used to access the list of ports exposed on the host.

Templates

The cluster property for both components and containers can be templated. The template function must be parsable as a boolean. In addition, each of the properties of cluster_host_count and cluster_instance_count can be templated. In this case the template function must be parsable as an unsigned integer. This was introduced in Replicated v2.8.0 .