In-place Data Centre Resizing

Nodes in a cluster data centre can be resized in-place via the Console or by issuing an API request. Resizing nodes let you scale the CPU core count and memory quota to meet changing demands and is significantly faster than adding additional Cassandra nodes.

Table of Contents

Preparation

Instaclustr recommends that you first test your applications against a data centre in a non-production setting to verify that the resize process doesn’t interrupt your applications.

During a cluster resize operation one or more nodes will temporarily become unavailable as they are resized. Cassandra, as a whole, will handle these transient outages to ensure data consistency but client applications need to be programmed with certain considerations in mind.

Instaclustr will only concurrently resize nodes within the same rack to ensure that replicas stored in other racks remain available during the resize.

Minimum Requirements

  • All keyspaces are using the Replication Strategy class:  org.apache.cassandra.locator.NetworkTopologyStrategy
  • All keyspaces have a Replication Factor ≥ 3 for the data centre.
    A RF of 0 or no RF specified is also permitted which implies no replicas exist in the data centre.
  • The number of nodes in the data centre is ≥ the specified Replication Factor for that data centre.

Additionally, you may only concurrently resize more than one node at a time in a data centre if:

  • The number of racks ≥ Replication Factor

Query Consistency Levels

Your clients query consistency level, which you can configure globally or per-query, specifies how many Cassandra replicas are required to acknowledge a read or write operation. During a data centre resize one or more nodes, and therefore replicas, will be temporarily offline. The query consistency level needs to be selected carefully to ensure that these transient outages won’t cause the queries to fail due to lack of sufficient replicas.

If you have a requirement to use a consistency level that will fail during a resize, then you will need to ensure that your application correctly handles the errors or exceptions returned or thrown by the Cassandra driver.

Different consistency levels will either allow queries to execute successfully or exhibit certain failure modes during a resize, as outlined below.

Consistency LevelQuery Behaviour During Resize
ANYSuccess
ONESuccess
TWOSuccess
THREECluster with a single data centre with a keyspace Replication Factor ≤ 3: Failure
Cluster with a single data centre with a keyspace Replication Factor > 3: Success
Cluster with multiple data centres: Success
QUORUMSuccess
ALLFailure

Cassandra will be unable to contact all replicas as one or more nodes will be offline during the resize.

Instaclustr recommends that your clients do not use the ALL consistency level unless absolutely required. Clients should be programmed to handle the resulting errors/exceptions returned/thrown by the Cassandra driver for queries executed while a resize is in progress.

LOCAL_ONESuccess
LOCAL_QUORUMSuccess
EACH_QUORUMSuccess
SERIALSame as QUORUM
LOCAL_SERIALSame as LOCAL_QUORUM

Resizing

To in-place resize a data centre click the Resize… button on the Cluster Details page for the corresponding data centre you wish to resize.

The Resize Data Centre page lets you select the desired target node size and specify the resize concurrency factor and notification options. The difference in CPU core count, memory quota and total monthly price are listed on the page.

The Concurrency Factor is a number, from 1 to the count of nodes in the largest rack, that specifies how many nodes may be resized at the same time. Instaclustr will only resize multiple nodes concurrently if they are located in the same rack.

By default Instaclustr will send your accounts’ designated support contacts an email once the resize is complete. You may opt-out of this notification by deselecting the Notify this accounts’ designated support contacts on resize completion checkbox.

While a resize is in progress the Cluster Details page will display the progress of the resize. You will see individual nodes switch from Running to Pending → Provisioning/Provisioned → Joining and then back to Running once their size has been changed.

Once a resize is in progress it cannot be canceled.

By Instaclustr Support
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