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Chapter 4. Stretch clusters for Ceph storage

As a storage administrator, you can configure stretch clusters by entering stretch mode with 2-site clusters.

Red Hat Ceph Storage is capable of withstanding the loss of Ceph OSDs because of its network and cluster, which are equally reliable with failures randomly distributed across the CRUSH map. If a number of OSDs is shut down, the remaining OSDs and monitors still manage to operate.

However, this might not be the best solution for some stretched cluster configurations where a significant part of the Ceph cluster can use only a single network component. The example is a single cluster located in multiple data centers, for which the user wants to sustain a loss of a full data center.

The standard configuration is with two data centers. Other configurations are in clouds or availability zones. Each site holds two copies of the data, therefore, the replication size is four. The third site should have a tiebreaker monitor, this can be a virtual machine or high-latency compared to the main sites. This monitor chooses one of the sites to restore data if the network connection fails and both data centers remain active.

Note

The standard Ceph configuration survives many failures of the network or data centers and it never compromises data consistency. If you restore enough Ceph servers following a failure, it recovers. Ceph maintains availability if you lose a data center, but can still form a quorum of monitors and have all the data available with enough copies to satisfy pools’ min_size, or CRUSH rules that replicate again to meet the size.

Note

There are no additional steps to power down a stretch cluster. You can see the Powering down and rebooting Red Hat Ceph Storage cluster for more information.

Stretch cluster failures

Red Hat Ceph Storage never compromises on data integrity and consistency. If there is a network failure or a loss of nodes and the services can still be restored, Ceph returns to normal functionality on its own.

However, there are situations where you lose data availability even if you have enough servers available to meet Ceph’s consistency and sizing constraints, or where you unexpectedly do not meet the constraints.

First important type of failure is caused by inconsistent networks. If there is a network split, Ceph might be unable to mark OSD as down to remove it from the acting placement group (PG) sets despite the primary OSD being unable to replicate data. When this happens, the I/O is not permitted because Ceph cannot meet its durability guarantees.

The second important category of failures is when it appears that you have data replicated across data enters, but the constraints are not sufficient to guarantee this. For example, you might have data centers A and B, and the CRUSH rule targets three copies and places a copy in each data center with a min_size of 2. The PG might go active with two copies in site A and no copies in site B, which means that if you lose site A, you lose the data and Ceph cannot operate on it. This situation is difficult to avoid with standard CRUSH rules.

4.1. Stretch mode for a storage cluster
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To configure stretch clusters, you must enter the stretch mode. When stretch mode is enabled, the Ceph OSDs only take PGs as active when they peer across data centers, or whichever other CRUSH bucket type you specified, assuming both are active. Pools increase in size from the default three to four, with two copies on each site.

In stretch mode, Ceph OSDs are only allowed to connect to monitors within the same data center. New monitors are not allowed to join the cluster without specified location.

If all the OSDs and monitors from a data center become inaccessible at once, the surviving data center will enter a degraded stretch mode. This issues a warning, reduces the min_size to 1, and allows the cluster to reach an active state with the data from the remaining site.

Note

The degraded state also triggers warnings that the pools are too small, because the pool size does not get changed. However, a special stretch mode flag prevents the OSDs from creating extra copies in the remaining data center, therefore it still keeps 2 copies.

When the missing data center becomes accesible again, the cluster enters recovery stretch mode. This changes the warning and allows peering, but still requires only the OSDs from the data center, which was up the whole time.

When all PGs are in a known state and are not degraded or incomplete, the cluster goes back to the regular stretch mode, ends the warning, and restores min_size to its starting value 2. The cluster again requires both sites to peer, not only the site that stayed up the whole time, therefore you can fail over to the other site, if necessary.

Stretch mode limitations

  • It is not possible to exit from stretch mode once it is entered.
  • You cannot use erasure-coded pools with clusters in stretch mode. You can neither enter the stretch mode with erasure-coded pools, nor create an erasure-coded pool when the stretch mode is active.
  • Stretch mode with no more than two sites is supported.

  • The weights of the two sites should be the same. If they are not, you receive the following error:

    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon enable_stretch_mode host05 stretch_rule datacenter

Error EINVAL: the 2 datacenter instances in the cluster have differing weights 25947 and 15728 but stretch mode currently requires they be the same!
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    To achieve same weights on both sites, the Ceph OSDs deployed in the two sites should be of equal size, that is, storage capacity in the first site is equivalent to storage capacity in the second site.

  • While it is not enforced, you should run two Ceph monitors on each site and a tiebreaker, for a total of five. This is because OSDs can only connect to monitors in their own site when in stretch mode.
  • You have to create your own CRUSH rule, which provides two copies on each site, which totals to four on both sites.
  • You cannot enable stretch mode if you have existing pools with non-default size or min_size.
  • Because the cluster runs with min_size 1 when degraded, you should only use stretch mode with all-flash OSDs. This minimizes the time needed to recover once connectivity is restored, and minimizes the potential for data loss.

4.1.1. Setting the crush location for the daemons
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Before you enter the stretch mode, you need to prepare the cluster by setting the crush location to the daemons in the Red Hat Ceph Storage cluster. There are two ways to do this:

  • Bootstrap the cluster through a service configuration file, where the locations are added to the hosts as part of deployment.
  • Set the locations manually through ceph osd crush add-bucket and ceph osd crush move commands after the cluster is deployed.

Method 1: Bootstrapping the cluster

Prerequisites

  • Root-level access to the nodes.

Procedure

  1. If you are bootstrapping your new storage cluster, you can create the service configuration .yaml file that adds the nodes to the Red Hat Ceph Storage cluster and also sets specific labels for where the services should run:

    Example

    service_type: host
addr: host01
hostname: host01
location:
  root: default
  datacenter: DC1
labels:
  - osd
  - mon
  - mgr
---
service_type: host
addr: host02
hostname: host02
location:
  datacenter: DC1
labels:
  - osd
  - mon
---
service_type: host
addr: host03
hostname: host03
location:
  datacenter: DC1
labels:
  - osd
  - mds
  - rgw
---
service_type: host
addr: host04
hostname: host04
location:
  root: default
  datacenter: DC2
labels:
  - osd
  - mon
  - mgr
---
service_type: host
addr: host05
hostname: host05
location:
  datacenter: DC2
labels:
  - osd
  - mon
---
service_type: host
addr: host06
hostname: host06
location:
  datacenter: DC2
labels:
  - osd
  - mds
  - rgw
---
service_type: host
addr: host07
hostname: host07
labels:
  - mon
---
service_type: mon
placement:
  label: "mon"
---
service_id: cephfs
placement:
  label: "mds"
---
service_type: mgr
service_name: mgr
placement:
  label: "mgr"
---
service_type: osd
service_id: all-available-devices
service_name: osd.all-available-devices
placement:
  label: "osd"
spec:
  data_devices:
    all: true
---
service_type: rgw
service_id: objectgw
service_name: rgw.objectgw
placement:
  count: 2
  label: "rgw"
spec:
  rgw_frontend_port: 8080
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  2. Bootstrap the storage cluster with the --apply-spec option:

    Syntax

    cephadm bootstrap --apply-spec CONFIGURATION_FILE_NAME --mon-ip MONITOR_IP_ADDRESS --ssh-private-key PRIVATE_KEY --ssh-public-key PUBLIC_KEY --registry-url REGISTRY_URL --registry-username USER_NAME --registry-password PASSWORD
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    Example

    [root@host01 ~]# cephadm bootstrap --apply-spec initial-config.yaml --mon-ip 10.10.128.68 --ssh-private-key /home/ceph/.ssh/id_rsa --ssh-public-key /home/ceph/.ssh/id_rsa.pub --registry-url registry.redhat.io --registry-username myuser1 --registry-password mypassword1
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    Important

    You can use different command options with the cephadm bootstrap command. However, always include the --apply-spec option to use the service configuration file and configure the host locations.

Method 2: Setting the locations after the deployment

Prerequisites

  • Root-level access to the nodes.

Procedure

  1. Add two buckets to which you plan to set the location of your non-tiebreaker monitors to the CRUSH map, specifying the bucket type as as datacenter:

    Syntax

    ceph osd crush add-bucket BUCKET_NAME BUCKET_TYPE
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    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd crush add-bucket DC1 datacenter
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd crush add-bucket DC2 datacenter
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  2. Move the buckets under root=default:

    Syntax

    ceph osd crush move BUCKET_NAME root=default
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    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd crush move DC1 root=default
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd crush move DC2 root=default
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  3. Move the OSD hosts according to the required CRUSH placement:

    Syntax

    ceph osd crush move HOST datacenter=DATACENTER
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    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd crush move host01 datacenter=DC1
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

4.1.2. Entering the stretch mode
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The new stretch mode is designed to handle two sites. There is a lower risk of component availability outages with 2-site clusters.

Prerequisites

  • Root-level access to the nodes.
  • The crush location is set to the hosts.

Procedure

  1. Set the location of each monitor, matching your CRUSH map:

    Syntax

    ceph mon set_location HOST datacenter=DATACENTER
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    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon set_location host01 datacenter=DC1
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon set_location host02 datacenter=DC1
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon set_location host04 datacenter=DC2
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon set_location host05 datacenter=DC2
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon set_location host07 datacenter=DC3
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  2. Generate a CRUSH rule which places two copies on each data center:

    Syntax

    ceph osd getcrushmap > COMPILED_CRUSHMAP_FILENAME
crushtool -d COMPILED_CRUSHMAP_FILENAME -o DECOMPILED_CRUSHMAP_FILENAME
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    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd getcrushmap > crush.map.bin
[ceph: root@host01 /]# crushtool -d crush.map.bin -o crush.map.txt
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    1. Edit the decompiled CRUSH map file to add a new rule:

      Example

      rule stretch_rule {
        id 1
      1 
      
        type replicated
        min_size 1
        max_size 10
        step take DC1
      2 
      
        step chooseleaf firstn 2 type host
        step emit
        step take DC2
      3 
      
        step chooseleaf firstn 2 type host
        step emit
}
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      1
      The rule id has to be unique. In this example, there is only one more rule with id 0, thereby the id 1 is used, however you might need to use a different rule ID depending on the number of existing rules.
      2 3
      In this example, there are two data center buckets named DC1 and DC2.
      Note

      This rule makes the cluster have read-affinity towards data center DC1. Therefore, all the reads or writes happen through Ceph OSDs placed in DC1.

      If this is not desirable, and reads or writes are to be distributed evenly across the zones, the crush rule is the following:

      Example

      rule stretch_rule {
id 1
type replicated
min_size 1
max_size 10
step take default
step choose firstn 0 type datacenter
step chooseleaf firstn 2 type host
step emit
}
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      In this rule, the data center is selected randomly and automatically.

      See CRUSH rules for more information on firstn and indep options.

  3. Inject the CRUSH map to make the rule available to the cluster:

    Syntax

    crushtool -c DECOMPILED_CRUSHMAP_FILENAME -o COMPILED_CRUSHMAP_FILENAME
ceph osd setcrushmap -i COMPILED_CRUSHMAP_FILENAME
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    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# crushtool -c crush.map.txt -o crush2.map.bin
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd setcrushmap -i crush2.map.bin
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  4. If you do not run the monitors in connectivity mode, set the election strategy to connectivity:

    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon set election_strategy connectivity
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  5. Enter stretch mode by setting the location of the tiebreaker monitor to split across the data centers:

    Syntax

    ceph mon set_location HOST datacenter=DATACENTER
ceph mon enable_stretch_mode HOST stretch_rule datacenter
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    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon set_location host07 datacenter=DC3
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon enable_stretch_mode host07 stretch_rule datacenter
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    In this example the monitor mon.host07 is the tiebreaker.

    Important

    The location of the tiebreaker monitor should differ from the data centers to which you previously set the non-tiebreaker monitors. In the example above, it is data center DC3.

    Important

    Do not add this data center to the CRUSH map as it results in the following error when you try to enter stretch mode: 

    Error EINVAL: there are 3 datacenters in the cluster but stretch mode currently only works with 2!
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    Note

    If you are writing your own tooling for deploying Ceph, you can use a new --set-crush-location option when booting monitors, instead of running the ceph mon set_location command. This option accepts only a single bucket=location pair, for example ceph-mon --set-crush-location 'datacenter=DC1', which must match the bucket type you specified when running the enable_stretch_mode command.

  6. Verify that the stretch mode is enabled successfully:

    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd dump

epoch 361
fsid 1234ab78-1234-11ed-b1b1-de456ef0a89d
created 2023-01-16T05:47:28.482717+0000
modified 2023-01-17T17:36:50.066183+0000
flags sortbitwise,recovery_deletes,purged_snapdirs,pglog_hardlimit
crush_version 31
full_ratio 0.95
backfillfull_ratio 0.92
nearfull_ratio 0.85
require_min_compat_client luminous
min_compat_client luminous
require_osd_release quincy
stretch_mode_enabled true
stretch_bucket_count 2
degraded_stretch_mode 0
recovering_stretch_mode 0
stretch_mode_bucket 8
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    The stretch_mode_enabled should be set to true. You can also see the number of stretch buckets, stretch mode buckets, and if the stretch mode is degraded or recovering.

  7. Verify that the monitors are in an appropriate locations:

    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph mon dump

epoch 19
fsid 1234ab78-1234-11ed-b1b1-de456ef0a89d
last_changed 2023-01-17T04:12:05.709475+0000
created 2023-01-16T05:47:25.631684+0000
min_mon_release 16 (pacific)
election_strategy: 3
stretch_mode_enabled 1
tiebreaker_mon host07
disallowed_leaders host07
0: [v2:132.224.169.63:3300/0,v1:132.224.169.63:6789/0] mon.host07; crush_location {datacenter=DC3}
1: [v2:220.141.179.34:3300/0,v1:220.141.179.34:6789/0] mon.host04; crush_location {datacenter=DC2}
2: [v2:40.90.220.224:3300/0,v1:40.90.220.224:6789/0] mon.host01; crush_location {datacenter=DC1}
3: [v2:60.140.141.144:3300/0,v1:60.140.141.144:6789/0] mon.host02; crush_location {datacenter=DC1}
4: [v2:186.184.61.92:3300/0,v1:186.184.61.92:6789/0] mon.host05; crush_location {datacenter=DC2}
dumped monmap epoch 19
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    You can also see which monitor is the tiebreaker, and the monitor election strategy.

4.1.3. Adding OSD hosts in stretch mode
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You can add Ceph OSDs in the stretch mode. The procedure is similar to the addition of the OSD hosts on a cluster where stretch mode is not enabled.

Prerequisites

  • A running Red Hat Ceph Storage cluster.
  • Stretch mode in enabled on a cluster.
  • Root-level access to the nodes.

Procedure

  1. List the available devices to deploy OSDs:

    Syntax

    ceph orch device ls [--hostname=HOST_1 HOST_2] [--wide] [--refresh]
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    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph orch device ls
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  2. Deploy the OSDs on specific hosts or on all the available devices:

    • Create an OSD from a specific device on a specific host:

      Syntax

      ceph orch daemon add osd HOST:DEVICE_PATH
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      Example

      [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph orch daemon add osd host03:/dev/sdb
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    • Deploy OSDs on any available and unused devices:

      Important

      This command creates collocated WAL and DB devices. If you want to create non-collocated devices, do not use this command.

      Example

      [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph orch apply osd --all-available-devices
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  3. Move the OSD hosts under the CRUSH bucket:

    Syntax

    ceph osd crush move HOST datacenter=DATACENTER
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    Example

    [ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd crush move host03 datacenter=DC1
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph osd crush move host06 datacenter=DC2
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    Note

    Ensure you add the same topology nodes on both sites. Issues might arise if hosts are added only on one site.

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