[Why]
Mnesia is a very powerful and convenient tool for Erlang applications:
it is a persistent disc-based database, it handles replication accross
multiple Erlang nodes and it is available out-of-the-box from the
Erlang/OTP distribution. RabbitMQ relies on Mnesia to manage all its
metadata:
* virtual hosts' properties
* intenal users
* queue, exchange and binding declarations (not queues data)
* runtime parameters and policies
* ...
Unfortunately Mnesia makes it difficult to handle network partition and,
as a consequence, the merge conflicts between Erlang nodes once the
network partition is resolved. RabbitMQ provides several partition
handling strategies but they are not bullet-proof. Users still hit
situations where it is a pain to repair a cluster following a network
partition.
[How]
@kjnilsson created Ra [1], a Raft consensus library that RabbitMQ
already uses successfully to implement quorum queues and streams for
instance. Those queues do not suffer from network partitions.
We created Khepri [2], a new persistent and replicated database engine
based on Ra and we want to use it in place of Mnesia in RabbitMQ to
solve the problems with network partitions.
This patch integrates Khepri as an experimental feature. When enabled,
RabbitMQ will store all its metadata in Khepri instead of Mnesia.
This change comes with behavior changes. While Khepri remains disabled,
you should see no changes to the behavior of RabbitMQ. If there are
changes, it is a bug. After Khepri is enabled, there are significant
changes of behavior that you should be aware of.
Because it is based on the Raft consensus algorithm, when there is a
network partition, only the cluster members that are in the partition
with at least `(Number of nodes in the cluster ÷ 2) + 1` number of nodes
can "make progress". In other words, only those nodes may write to the
Khepri database and read from the database and expect a consistent
result.
For instance in a cluster of 5 RabbitMQ nodes:
* If there are two partitions, one with 3 nodes, one with 2 nodes, only
the group of 3 nodes will be able to write to the database.
* If there are three partitions, two with 2 nodes, one with 1 node, none
of the group can write to the database.
Because the Khepri database will be used for all kind of metadata, it
means that RabbitMQ nodes that can't write to the database will be
unable to perform some operations. A list of operations and what to
expect is documented in the associated pull request and the RabbitMQ
website.
This requirement from Raft also affects the startup of RabbitMQ nodes in
a cluster. Indeed, at least a quorum number of nodes must be started at
once to allow nodes to become ready.
To enable Khepri, you need to enable the `khepri_db` feature flag:
rabbitmqctl enable_feature_flag khepri_db
When the `khepri_db` feature flag is enabled, the migration code
performs the following two tasks:
1. It synchronizes the Khepri cluster membership from the Mnesia
cluster. It uses `mnesia_to_khepri:sync_cluster_membership/1` from
the `khepri_mnesia_migration` application [3].
2. It copies data from relevant Mnesia tables to Khepri, doing some
conversion if necessary on the way. Again, it uses
`mnesia_to_khepri:copy_tables/4` from `khepri_mnesia_migration` to do
it.
This can be performed on a running standalone RabbitMQ node or cluster.
Data will be migrated from Mnesia to Khepri without any service
interruption. Note that during the migration, the performance may
decrease and the memory footprint may go up.
Because this feature flag is considered experimental, it is not enabled
by default even on a brand new RabbitMQ deployment.
More about the implementation details below:
In the past months, all accesses to Mnesia were isolated in a collection
of `rabbit_db*` modules. This is where the integration of Khepri mostly
takes place: we use a function called `rabbit_khepri:handle_fallback/1`
which selects the database and perform the query or the transaction.
Here is an example from `rabbit_db_vhost`:
* Up until RabbitMQ 3.12.x:
get(VHostName) when is_binary(VHostName) ->
get_in_mnesia(VHostName).
* Starting with RabbitMQ 3.13.0:
get(VHostName) when is_binary(VHostName) ->
rabbit_khepri:handle_fallback(
#{mnesia => fun() -> get_in_mnesia(VHostName) end,
khepri => fun() -> get_in_khepri(VHostName) end}).
This `rabbit_khepri:handle_fallback/1` function relies on two things:
1. the fact that the `khepri_db` feature flag is enabled, in which case
it always executes the Khepri-based variant.
4. the ability or not to read and write to Mnesia tables otherwise.
Before the feature flag is enabled, or during the migration, the
function will try to execute the Mnesia-based variant. If it succeeds,
then it returns the result. If it fails because one or more Mnesia
tables can't be used, it restarts from scratch: it means the feature
flag is being enabled and depending on the outcome, either the
Mnesia-based variant will succeed (the feature flag couldn't be enabled)
or the feature flag will be marked as enabled and it will call the
Khepri-based variant. The meat of this function really lives in the
`khepri_mnesia_migration` application [3] and
`rabbit_khepri:handle_fallback/1` is a wrapper on top of it that knows
about the feature flag.
However, some calls to the database do not depend on the existence of
Mnesia tables, such as functions where we need to learn about the
members of a cluster. For those, we can't rely on exceptions from
Mnesia. Therefore, we just look at the state of the feature flag to
determine which database to use. There are two situations though:
* Sometimes, we need the feature flag state query to block because the
function interested in it can't return a valid answer during the
migration. Here is an example:
case rabbit_khepri:is_enabled(RemoteNode) of
true -> can_join_using_khepri(RemoteNode);
false -> can_join_using_mnesia(RemoteNode)
end
* Sometimes, we need the feature flag state query to NOT block (for
instance because it would cause a deadlock). Here is an example:
case rabbit_khepri:get_feature_state() of
enabled -> members_using_khepri();
_ -> members_using_mnesia()
end
Direct accesses to Mnesia still exists. They are limited to code that is
specific to Mnesia such as classic queue mirroring or network partitions
handling strategies.
Now, to discover the Mnesia tables to migrate and how to migrate them,
we use an Erlang module attribute called
`rabbit_mnesia_tables_to_khepri_db` which indicates a list of Mnesia
tables and an associated converter module. Here is an example in the
`rabbitmq_recent_history_exchange` plugin:
-rabbit_mnesia_tables_to_khepri_db(
[{?RH_TABLE, rabbit_db_rh_exchange_m2k_converter}]).
The converter module — `rabbit_db_rh_exchange_m2k_converter` in this
example — is is fact a "sub" converter module called but
`rabbit_db_m2k_converter`. See the documentation of a `mnesia_to_khepri`
converter module to learn more about these modules.
[1] https://github.com/rabbitmq/ra
[2] https://github.com/rabbitmq/khepri
[3] https://github.com/rabbitmq/khepri_mnesia_migration
See #7206.
Co-authored-by: Jean-Sébastien Pédron <jean-sebastien@rabbitmq.com>
Co-authored-by: Diana Parra Corbacho <dparracorbac@vmware.com>
Co-authored-by: Michael Davis <mcarsondavis@gmail.com>
The test largely does what it's pattern-based version does.
During our Erlang 24 and 25 upgrade cycles, this version required
extra attention even though the feature works as advertised in
other tests and during manual testing.
Without this change the test could take a very long time to
cleanup the queues and finish because of a race condition
between the queue deletion and the federation link being
restarted and declaring the queue again.
(The test bidirectional was renamed to message_flow to better
represent what it is doing.)
Unlike with gnu make, mixed version testing with bazel uses a package-generic-unix for the secondary umbrella rather than the source. This brings the benefit of being able to mixed version test releases built with older erlang versions (even though all nodes will run under the single version given to bazel)
This introduces new test labels, adding a `-mixed` suffix for every existing test. They can be skipped if necessary with `--test_tag_filters` (see the github actions workflow for an example)
As part of the change, it is now possible to run an old release of rabbit with rabbitmq_run rule, such as:
`bazel run @rabbitmq-server-generic-unix-3.8.17//:rabbitmq-run run-broker`
Michael Klishin
Diana Parra Corbacho
Michael Klishin
Diana Parra Corbacho
Michael Klishin
Jean-Sébastien Pédron
Loïc Hoguin
Philip Kuryloski
Karl Nilsson
dcorbacho
Luke Bakken
Diego Herrera Celedón
Spring Operator
Michael Klishin
Diana Corbacho
Daniil Fedotov