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ScyllaDB Docs ScyllaDB Enterprise ScyllaDB Architecture Consistency Level Console Demo

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Consistency Level Console Demo¶

In this demo, we’ll bring up 3 nodes and demonstrate how writes and reads look, with tracing enabled in a cluster where our Replication Factor (RF) is set to 3. We’ll change the Consistency Level (CL) between operations to show how messages are passed between nodes, and finally take down a few nodes to show failure conditions in a Scylla cluster.

You can also learn more in the High Availability lesson on Scylla University.

Note: We use asciinema to generate the console casts used in this demo. These asciicasts are more readable than embedded video, and allow you to copy the text or commands directly from the console to your clipboard. We suggest viewing console casts in fullscreen to see the properly formatted output.

Step one: bring up the cluster¶

First, we’ll bring up a 3-node docker cluster. You’ll see all the nodes eventually read UN for status. U means up, and N means normal. Read more about Nodetool Status.

Once all nodes are up, we can run our CQL shell.

We’ve run nodetool status after we’ve waited for all nodes to come up:

     Datacenter: datacenter1
     =======================
     Status=Up/Down
     |/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
     --  Address     Load       Tokens       Owns (effective)  Host ID                               Rack
     UN  172.17.0.3  127.42 KB  256          65.8%             66a3bfe7-3e90-4859-a394-becc00af1cf2  rack1
     UN  172.17.0.2  110.58 KB  256          65.5%             f66639bf-3259-47f5-8487-602fcb082624  rack1
     UN  172.17.0.4  118.38 KB  256          68.6%             d978ff65-0331-4f27-a129-9be2d7169ad6  rack1

Step two: take a single node down, check different consistency levels¶

So, what happens when we take a single node down? Here, we’ll take a single node down, check status with nodetool, attempt a write with ALL and QUORUM consistency levels.

Note that we’ve turned tracing off. We can observe that our CL=ALL writes will always fail because one of the nodes is down. CL=QUORUM operations could fail, depending on whether a required partition replica falls on a node that is up or down.

Step three: take 2 nodes down, read and write with different consistency levels¶

Let’s take a second node down and attempt to read and write with QUORUM and ONE consistency levels.

With 2 nodes down on our 3 node cluster and RF=3, a CL=QUORUM will always fail as at least one of the required nodes will always be down. One the other hand, a CL=ONE will succeed, as it only requires one up node.

Step four: testing different consistency levels with tracing on¶

Finally, we’ll turn on tracing, and with all our nodes up, write to the table with CL=ALL and read from it with CL=QUORUM.

We’ve just written a record with our consistency level set to ALL.

cqlsh:mykeyspace> CONSISTENCY ALL

Consistency level set to ALL.

cqlsh:mykeyspace> CREATE TABLE users(user_id int PRIMARY KEY, fname text, lname text);
cqlsh:mykeyspace> TRACING ON

Now Tracing is enabled

cqlsh:mykeyspace> insert into users(user_id, lname, fname) values (1, 'tzach', 'livyatan');

Here’s the output:

     Tracing session: 84deb7a0-9d81-11e7-b770-000000000002

      activity                                                                | timestamp                  | source     | source_elapsed
     -------------------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------+------------+---------------
     Execute CQL3 query                                                       | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.362000 | 172.17.0.4 | 0
     Parsing a statement [shard 0]                                            | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.362223 | 172.17.0.4 | 14
     Processing a statement [shard 0]                                         | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.362604 | 172.17.0.4 | 273
     Creating write handler for token: -4069959284402364209                   | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.362962 | 172.17.0.4 | 755
       natural: {172.17.0.3, 172.17.0.4, 172.17.0.2} pending: {} [shard 0]    |                            |            |
     Creating write handler with live: {172.17.0.2, 172.17.0.3, 172.17.0.4}   | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.362992 | 172.17.0.4 | 784
       dead: {} [shard 0]                                                     |                            |            |
     Sending a mutation to /172.17.0.2 [shard 0]                              | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.363171 | 172.17.0.4 | 959
     Sending a mutation to /172.17.0.3 [shard 0]                              | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.363298 | 172.17.0.4 | 1090
     Executing a mutation locally [shard 0]                                   | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.363316 | 172.17.0.4 | 1109
     Message received from /172.17.0.4 [shard 1]                              | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.363942 | 172.17.0.3 | 16
     Sending mutation_done to /172.17.0.4 [shard 1]                           | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.364225 | 172.17.0.3 | 307
     Message received from /172.17.0.4 [shard 1]                              | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.365395 | 172.17.0.2 | 93
     Sending mutation_done to /172.17.0.4 [shard 1]                           | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.365561 | 172.17.0.2 | 206
     Mutation handling is done [shard 1]                                      | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.366538 | 172.17.0.2 | 1234
     Got a response from /172.17.0.2 [shard 0]                                | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.368064 | 172.17.0.4 | 5858
     Got a response from /172.17.0.4 [shard 0]                                | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.369589 | 172.17.0.4 | 7384
     Mutation handling is done [shard 1]                                      | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.370843 | 172.17.0.3 | 6928
     Got a response from /172.17.0.3 [shard 0]                                | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.372486 | 172.17.0.4 | 9964
     Mutation successfully completed [shard 0]                                | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.372519 | 172.17.0.4 | 10314
     Done processing - preparing a result [shard 0]                           | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.372548 | 172.17.0.4 | 10341
     Request complete                                                         | 2017-09-19 21:28:46.372357 | 172.17.0.4 | 10357

With tracing on, we have verbose output. Also, with all nodes up, we should have no errors experiencing a CL=ALL write. (Later, we will try different consistency levels with 1 and 2 nodes down.) With RF=3, we see all three nodes involved in the interaction. Once the co-ordinator (172.17.0.4) has received responses from the two other replicas - 172.17.0.2 and 172.17.0.3 - as well as itself- the operation is complete.

So what happens when we write under QUORUM instead of ALL? QUORUM means that we only require responses from (Replication Factor/2) + 1 nodes. Our replication factor is 3, therefore only a majority of 2 nodes must provide an acknowledgement for the eventually-consistent write to be considered successful. Below, we observe that our coordinator, after sending two other mutations to replicas 172.17.0.2 and 172.17.0.3, executes a mutation locally. However, our coordinator only requires a write acknowledgement from itself and 172.17.0.3 before Mutation successfully completed is returned. Note that the response from 172.17.0.2 actually comes later.

cqlsh:mykeyspace> CONSISTENCY QUORUM

Consistency level set to QUORUM.

cqlsh:mykeyspace> insert into users (user_id, fname, lname) values (2, 'john', 'hammink');

Output:

     Tracing session: ccb9d1d0-98d7-11e7-b971-000000000003

      activity                                                                | timestamp                  | source     | source_elapsed
     -------------------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------+------------+---------------
     Execute CQL3 query                                                       | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.821000 | 172.17.0.4 | 0
     Parsing a statement [shard 3]                                            | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.821879 | 172.17.0.4 | 1
     Processing a statement [shard 3]                                         | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.822050 | 172.17.0.4 | 172
     Creating write handler for token: -3248873570005575792                   | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.822160 | 172.17.0.4 | 283
       natural: {172.17.0.3, 172.17.0.4, 172.17.0.2} pending: {} [shard 3]    |                            |            |
     Creating write handler with live: {172.17.0.2, 172.17.0.3, 172.17.0.4}   | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.822171 | 172.17.0.4 | 293
         dead: {} [shard 3]                                                   |                            |            |
     Sending a mutation to /172.17.0.2 [shard 3]                              | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.822192 | 172.17.0.4 | 314
     Sending a mutation to /172.17.0.3 [shard 3]                              | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.822209 | 172.17.0.4 | 331
     Executing a mutation locally [shard 3]                                   | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.822214 | 172.17.0.4 | 336
     Message received from /172.17.0.4 [shard 1]                              | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.822564 | 172.17.0.2 | 7
     Message received from /172.17.0.4 [shard 1]                              | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.822851 | 172.17.0.3 | 5
     Sending mutation_done to /172.17.0.4 [shard 1]                           | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.823009 | 172.17.0.2 | 452
     Mutation handling is done [shard 1]                                      | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.823067 | 172.17.0.2 | 510
     Sending mutation_done to /172.17.0.4 [shard 1]                           | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.823734 | 172.17.0.3 | 887
     Mutation handling is done [shard 1]                                      | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.823744 | 172.17.0.3 | 898
     Got a response from /172.17.0.4 [shard 3]                                | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.823984 | 172.17.0.4 | 2106
     Got a response from /172.17.0.3 [shard 3]                                | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.824998 | 172.17.0.4 | 3120
     Mutation successfully completed [shard 3]                                | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.825003 | 172.17.0.4 | 3125
     Done processing - preparing a result [shard 3]                           | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.825054 | 172.17.0.4 | 3176
     Got a response from /172.17.0.2 [shard 3]                                | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.825696 | 172.17.0.4 | 3817
     Request complete                                                         | 2017-09-13 23:03:47.824182 | 172.17.0.4 | 3182

We can observe that reading under QUORUM consistency works similarly. In our example below, our coordinator 172.17.0.4 waits for only read_data from 172.17.0.2 (as well as itself earlier: read_data: querying locally) before the read is considered successful. Note that node 172.17.0.3 similarly handles read_digest as 172.17.0.2 handles read_data.

cqlsh:mykeyspace> CONSISTENCY QUORUM

Consistency level set to QUORUM.

cqlsh:mykeyspace> select * from users where user_id = 1;

Output:

      user_id | fname | lname
     ---------+-------+----------
            1 | tzach | livyatan

     (1 rows)

     Tracing session: b11084e0-9e33-11e7-9f6b-000000000003

      activity                                                                | timestamp                  | source     | source_elapsed
     -------------------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------+------------+---------------
     Execute CQL3 query                                                       | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.926000 | 172.17.0.4 | 0
     Parsing a statement [shard 3]                                            | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.926442 | 172.17.0.4 | 1
     Processing a statement [shard 3]                                         | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.926538 | 172.17.0.4 | 97
     Creating read executor for token -4069959284402364209                    | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.926606 | 172.17.0.4 | 165
       with all: {172.17.0.4, 172.17.0.2, 172.17.0.3}                         |                            |            |
       targets: {172.17.0.4, 172.17.0.2, 172.17.0.3}                          |                            |            |
       repair decision: DC_LOCAL [shard 3]                                    |                            |            |
     read_digest: sending a message to /172.17.0.3 [shard 3]                  | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.926634 | 172.17.0.4 | 193
     read_data: querying locally [shard 3]                                    | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.926664 | 172.17.0.4 | 223
     read_data: sending a message to /172.17.0.2 [shard 3]                    | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.926711 | 172.17.0.4 | 270
     read_digest: message received from /172.17.0.4 [shard 3]                 | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.926956 | 172.17.0.3 | 6
     read_data: message received from /172.17.0.4 [shard 3]                   | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.927310 | 172.17.0.2 | 7
     read_digest handling is done, sending a response to /172.17.0.4 [shard 3]| 2017-09-20 18:44:10.927454 | 172.17.0.3 | 505
     read_data handling is done, sending a response to /172.17.0.4 [shard 3]  | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.928248 | 172.17.0.2 | 946
     read_digest: got response from /172.17.0.3 [shard 3]                     | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.929873 | 172.17.0.4 | 3432
     read_data: got response from /172.17.0.2 [shard 3]                       | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.929880 | 172.17.0.4 | 3439
     Done processing - preparing a result [shard 3]                           | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.929934 | 172.17.0.4 | 3493
     Request complete                                                         | 2017-09-20 18:44:10.929503 | 172.17.0.4 | 3503

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    • Step one: bring up the cluster
    • Step two: take a single node down, check different consistency levels
    • Step three: take 2 nodes down, read and write with different consistency levels
    • Step four: testing different consistency levels with tracing on
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