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Best Practices for Running Scylla on Docker¶

This is an article on how to use the ScyllaDB Docker image to start up a Scylla node, access nodetool and cqlsh utilities, start a cluster of Scylla nodes, configure data volume for storage, configure resource limits of the Docker container, use additional command line flags and overwrite scylla.yaml settings. Finally, there is an additional section with some basic usage of Scylla within Docker.

See also the image description on Docker Hub or our original blog.

Please note that these instructions assume that you have configured Docker so that you can run it as a regular user. Usually, this is done by adding the user to a Docker group. See your platform-specific Docker installation documentation on how to do that (see, for example, instructions for Fedora and Ubuntu). If you have not configured a Docker group, you need to prefix the Docker commands with sudo to have sufficient permissions to run them.

NOTE: You should allocate a minimum of 1.5 GB of RAM per container.

Basic Operations¶

Starting a Single Scylla Node¶

To start a single Scylla node instance in a Docker container, run:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla

The docker run command starts a new Docker instance in the background named some-scylla that runs the Scylla server:

docker ps

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                                          NAMES
616ee646cb9d        scylladb/scylla     "/docker-entrypoint.p"   4 seconds ago       Up 4 seconds        7000-7001/tcp, 9042/tcp, 9160/tcp, 10000/tcp   some-scylla

As seen from the docker ps output, the image exposes ports 7000-7001 (Inter-node RPC), 9042 (CQL), 9160 (Thrift), and 10000 (REST API).

Viewing Scylla Server Logs¶

To access Scylla server logs, you can use the docker logs command:

docker logs some-scylla  | tail

INFO  2016-11-09 10:27:48,191 [shard 6] database - Setting compaction strategy of system_traces.node_slow_log to SizeTieredCompactionStrategy
INFO  2016-11-09 10:27:48,191 [shard 4] database - Setting compaction strategy of system_traces.node_slow_log to SizeTieredCompactionStrategy
INFO  2016-11-09 10:27:48,191 [shard 3] database - Setting compaction strategy of system_traces.node_slow_log to SizeTieredCompactionStrategy
INFO  2016-11-09 10:27:48,191 [shard 1] database - Setting compaction strategy of system_traces.node_slow_log to SizeTieredCompactionStrategy

Checking Server Status with Nodetool¶

The Docker image also has Scylla’s utilities installed. Nodetool is a command line tool for querying and managing a ScyllaDB cluster. The simplest nodetool command is nodetool status, which displays information about the cluster state:

docker exec -it some-scylla nodetool status
Datacenter: datacenter1
=======================
Status=Up/Down
|/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
--  Address     Load       Tokens  Owns (effective)  Host ID                               Rack
UN  172.17.0.2  125 KB     256     100.0%            c1906b2b-ce0c-4890-a9d4-8c360f111ad0  rack1

Using cqlsh¶

The cqlsh tool (CQL Shell) is an interactive Cassandra Query Language (CQL) shell for querying and manipulating data in the Scylla cluster.

To start an interactive session, run the following command:

docker exec -it some-scylla cqlsh
Connected to Test Cluster at 172.17.0.2:9042.
[cqlsh 5.0.1 | Cassandra 2.1.8 | CQL spec 3.2.1 | Native protocol v3]
Use HELP for help.

and then run CQL queries against the cluster:

cqlsh> SELECT cluster_name FROM system.local;

cluster_name
--------------
Test Cluster

(1 rows)

Starting a Cluster¶

With a single some-scylla instance running, joining new nodes to form a cluster is easy:

docker run --name some-scylla2 -d scylladb/scylla --seeds="$(docker inspect --format='{{ .NetworkSettings.IPAddress }}' some-scylla)"

To query when the node is up and running (and view the status of the entire cluster) use the nodetool status command:

docker exec -it some-scylla nodetool status
Datacenter: datacenter1
=======================
Status=Up/Down
|/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
--  Address     Load       Tokens  Owns (effective)  Host ID                               Rack
UN  172.17.0.3  177.48 KB  256     100.0%            097caff5-892d-412f-af78-11d572795d6f  rack1
UN  172.17.0.2  125 KB     256     100.0%            c1906b2b-ce0c-4890-a9d4-8c360f111ad0  rack1

Restarting Scylla from within the Running Node¶

The Docker image uses supervisord to manage Scylla processes. You can restart Scylla in a Docker container using:

docker exec -it some-scylla supervisorctl restart scylla

Configuring a Data Volume for Storage¶

The default filesystem in Docker is inadequate for anything else than just testing out Scylla, but you can use Docker volumes for improving storage performance.

To use data volumes, ensure first that it’s on a Scylla-supported filesystem like XFS, then create a Scylla data directory /var/lib/scylla on the host. This will be used by Scylla container to store all data:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/scylla/data /var/lib/scylla/commitlog

Then launch Scylla instances using Docker’s --volume command line option to mount the created host directory as a data volume in the container and disable Scylla’s developer mode to run I/O tuning before starting up the Scylla node.

docker run --name some-scylla --volume /var/lib/scylla:/var/lib/scylla -d scylladb/scylla --developer-mode=0

Overriding scylla.yaml with a Master File¶

Sometimes, it’s not possible to adjust Scylla-specific settings (including non-network properties, like cluster_name ) directly from the command line when Scylla is running within Docker.

Instead, it may be necessary to incrementally override scylla.yaml settings by passing an external, master Scylla.yaml file when starting the Docker container for the node.

To do this, you can use the --volume (-v) command as before to specify the overriding .yaml file:

NOTE: you can create a master_scylla.yaml in current host dir: just copy the file from https://github.com/scylladb/scylla/blob/master/conf/scylla.yaml.

On the host, create and edit master_scylla.yaml, for example. Uncomment and change the “cluster_name” parameter.
Start the Scylla node, with the command to override scylla.yaml with master_scylla.yaml :

docker run --name some-scylla --volume ~/master_scylla.yaml:/etc/scylla/scylla.yaml -d scylladb/scylla

NOTE: You can start a Docker node with any other alternate parameter configured in scylla.yaml using this technique.

Finally, you can check that the setting was changed:

docker exec -it some-scylla nodetool describecluster

Cluster Information:
       Name: Doobie Snarf
       Snitch: org.apache.cassandra.locator.SimpleSnitch
       Partitioner: org.apache.cassandra.dht.Murmur3Partitioner
       Schema versions:
               34259144-0f3f-305f-a777-2811e30e17b3: [172.17.0.2]

Getting Performance out of your Docker Container¶

By default, our Docker image defaults to a mode where Scylla’s architectural optimizations are not enabled. With these command-line settings, you can introduce incremental changes that boost your Scylla performance on Docker even more.

Configuring Resource Limits¶

Scylla uses all CPUs and memory by default. To configure resource limits for your Docker container, you can use the --smp, --memory, and --cpuset command line options documented in the section “Network and command-line settings” below.

The recommended way to run multiple Scylla instances on the same physical hardware is by statically partitioning all resources. For example, using the --cpuset option to assign cores 0 and 1 to one instance, and 2 and 3 to another.

In scenarios in which static partitioning is not desired - like mostly-idle cluster without hard latency requirements, the --overprovisioned command-line option is recommended. This enables certain optimizations for Scylla to run efficiently in an overprovisioned environment.

NOTE: You should allocate a minimum of 1.5 GB of RAM per container.

Network and Command-Line Settings¶

The Scylla image supports many command line options that are passed to the Docker run command. Keep in mind that these command-line settings override the corresponding settings in your scylla.yaml.

–seeds SEEDS¶

The --seeds command line option configures Scylla’s seed nodes. If no --seeds option is specified, Scylla uses its own IP address as the seed.

For example, to configure Scylla to run with two seed nodes 192.168.0.100 and 192.168.0.200.

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --seeds 192.168.0.100,192.168.0.200

–listen-address ADDR¶

The --listen-address command line option configures the IP address the Scylla instance listens for client connections.

For example, to configure Scylla to use listen address 10.0.0.5:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --listen-address 10.0.0.5

–broadcast-address ADDR¶

The --broadcast-address command line option configures the IP address the Scylla instance tells other Scylla nodes in the cluster to connect to.

For example, to configure Scylla to use broadcast address 10.0.0.5:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --broadcast-address 10.0.0.5

–broadcast-rpc-address ADDR¶

The --broadcast-rpc-address command line option configures the IP address the Scylla instance tells clients to connect to.

For example, to configure Scylla to use broadcast RPC address 10.0.0.5:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --broadcast-rpc-address 10.0.0.5

–smp COUNT¶

The --smp command line option restricts Scylla to COUNT number of CPUs. The option does not, however, mandate a specific placement of CPUs. See the --cpuset command line option if you need Scylla to run on specific CPUs.

For example, to restrict Scylla to 2 CPUs:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --smp 2

–memory AMOUNT¶

The --memory command line option restricts Scylla to use up to AMOUNT of memory. The AMOUNT value supports both M unit for megabytes and G unit for gigabytes.

For example, to restrict Scylla to 4 GB of memory:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --memory 4G

**NOTE: You should allocate a minimum of 1.5 GB of RAM per container.**

–overprovisioned ENABLE¶

The --overprovisioned command line option enables or disables optimizations for running Scylla in an overprovisioned environment. If no --overprovisioned option is specified, Scylla defaults to running with optimizations disabled.

For example, to enable optimizations for running in an overprovisioned environment:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --overprovisioned 1

–cpuset CPUSET¶

The --cpuset command line option restricts Scylla to run on only on CPUs specified by CPUSET. The CPUSET value is either a single CPU (e.g. --cpuset 1), a range (e.g. --cpuset 2-3), or a list (e.g. --cpuset 1,2,5), or a combination of the last two options (e.g. --cpuset 1-2,5).

For example, to restrict Scylla to run on physical CPUs 0 to 2 and 4:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --cpuset 0-2,4

–developer-mode ENABLE¶

The --developer-mode command line option enables Scylla’s developer mode, which relaxes checks for things like XFS and enables Scylla to run on unsupported configurations (which usually results in suboptimal performance). If no --developer-mode command line option is defined, Scylla defaults to running with developer mode enabled.

It is highly recommended to disable developer mode for production deployments to ensure Scylla is able to run with maximum performance.

To disable developer mode:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --developer-mode 0

–experimental ENABLE¶

The --experimental command line option enables Scylla’s experimental mode. If no --experimental command line option is defined, Scylla defaults to running with experimental mode disabled.

It is highly recommended to disable experimental mode for production deployments.

For example, to enable experimental mode:

docker run --name some-scylla -d scylladb/scylla --experimental 1

Other Useful Tips and Tricks¶

Checking the Current Version of Scylla on the Node¶

docker exec -it some-scylla scylla --version

Using a Local CSV File to Import Data into Scylla¶

First, download the file locally to the node:

sudo docker exec -it some-scylla.2.0.1 curl -o file.csv https://<url>.com/<path>/<path>/<file>.csv

Once you have the .csv downloaded, you can use the CQL COPY FROM command as explained here to load the data into Scylla.

Such a copy command might look like this:

cqlsh:my_keyspace> COPY <table_name> FROM 'file.csv' WITH HEADER=true;

Searching for a setting in scylla.yaml¶

scylla.yaml can be found at /etc/scylla/scylla.yaml. In this case, you can search for a specific entry in the file. For example, if you wanted to determine if a setup was experimental and were to search for experimental in the file, you could try:

docker exec -it some-scylla grep -H 'experimental' /etc/scylla/scylla.yaml

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