Replication¶
You can configure CrateDB to replicate tables. When you configure replication, CrateDB will try to ensure that every table shard has one or more copies available at all times.
When there are multiple copies of the same shard, CrateDB will mark one as the primary shard and treat the rest as replica shards. Write operations always go to the primary shard, whereas read operations can go to any shard. CrateDB continually synchronizes data from the primary shard to all replica shards (through a process known as shard recovery).
When a primary shard is lost (e.g., due to node failure), CrateDB will promote a replica shard to a primary. Hence, more table replicas mean a smaller chance of permanent data loss (through increased data redundancy) in exchange for more disk space utilization and intra-cluster network traffic.
Replication can also improve read performance because any increase in the number of shards distributed across a cluster also increases the opportunities for CrateDB to parallelize query execution across multiple nodes.
Table of contents
Table configuration¶
You can configure the number of per-shard replicas WITH the number_of_replicas table setting.
For example:
cr> CREATE TABLE my_table (
... first_column integer,
... second_column text
... ) WITH (number_of_replicas = 0);
CREATE OK, 1 row affected (... sec)
As well as being able to configure a fixed number of replicas, you can configure a range of values by using a string to specify a minimum and a maximum (dependent on the number of nodes in the cluster).
Here are some examples of replica ranges:
Range |
Explanation |
|---|---|
|
If you only have one node, CrateDB will not create any replicas. If you have more than one node, CrateDB will create one replica per shard. This range is the default value. |
|
Each table will require at least two replicas for CrateDB to consider it fully replicated (i.e., a green replication health status). If the cluster has five nodes, CrateDB will create four replicas and allocate each one to a node that does not hold the corresponding primary. Suppose a cluster has four nodes or fewer. In that case, CrateDB will be unable to allocate every replica to a node that does not hold the corresponding primary, putting the table into underreplication. As a result, CrateDB will give the table a yellow replication health status. |
|
CrateDB will create one replica shard for every node that is available in addition to the node that holds the primary shard. |
If you do not specify a number_of_replicas, CrateDB will create one or zero
replicas, depending on the number of available nodes at the cluster (e.g., on a
single-node cluster, number_of_replicas will be set to zero to allow fast
write operations with the default setting of
write.wait_for_active_shards).
You can change the number_of_replicas setting at any time.
See also
Shard recovery¶
CrateDB allocates each primary and replica shard to a specific node. You can control this behavior by configuring the allocation settings.
If one or more nodes become unavailable (e.g., due to hardware failure or network issues), CrateDB will try to recover a replicated table by doing the following:
For every lost primary shard, locate a replica and promote it to a primary.
When CrateDB promotes a replica to primary, it can no longer function as a replica, and so the total number of replicas decreases by one. Because each primary requires a fixed number_of_replicas, a new replica has to be created (see next item).
For every primary with too few replicas (due to node loss or replica promotion), use the primary shard to recover the required number of replicas.
Shard recovery is one of the features that allows CrateDB to provide continuous availability and partition tolerance in exchange for some consistency trade-offs.
See also
Underreplication¶
Having more replicas per primary and distributing shards as thinly as possible (i.e., fewer shards per node) can both increase chances of a successful recovery in the event of node loss.
A single node can hold multiple shards belonging to the same table. For example, suppose a table has more shards (primaries and replicas) than nodes available in the cluster. In that case, CrateDB will determine the best way to allocate shards to the nodes available.
However, there is never a benefit to allocating multiple copies of the same shard to a single node (e.g., the primary and a replica of the same shard or two replicas of the same shard).
For example:
Suppose a single node held the primary and a replica of the same shard. If that node were lost, CrateDB would be unable to use either copy of the shard for recovery (because both were lost), effectively making the replica useless.
Suppose a single node held two replicas of the same shard. If the primary shard were lost (on a different node), CrateDB would only need one of the replica shards on this node to promote a new primary, effectively making the second replica useless.
In both cases, the second copy of the shard serves no purpose.
For this reason, CrateDB will never allocate multiple copies of the same shard to a single node.
The above rule means that for one primary shard and n replicas, a cluster must have at least n + 1 available nodes for CrateDB to fully replicate all shards. When CrateDB cannot fully replicate all shards, the table enters a state known as underreplication.
CrateDB gives underreplicated tables a yellow health status.
Tip
The CrateDB Admin UI provides visual indicators of cluster health that take replication status into account.
Alternatively, you can query health information directly from the sys.health table and replication information from the sys.shards and sys.allocations tables.