This library provides a mechanism for automatically forming clusters of Erlang nodes, with either static or dynamic node membership. It provides a publish/subscribe mechanism for cluster events so that you can easily be notified when cluster members join or leave, and provides a pluggable "strategy" system, with a variety of strategies provided out of the box.
You can find supporting documentation here.
- Automatic cluster formation/healing
- Choice of multiple clustering strategies out of the box:
- Standard Distributed Erlang facilities (e.g.
epmd
,.hosts.erlang
), which supports IP-based or DNS-based names - Multicast UDP gossip, using a configurable port/multicast address,
- Kubernetes via it's metadata API using via a configurable label selector and node basename; or alternatively, using DNS.
- Rancher, via it's metadata API
- Standard Distributed Erlang facilities (e.g.
- Easy to provide your own custom clustering strategies for your specific environment.
- Easy to use provide your own distribution plumbing (i.e. something other than
Distributed Erlang), by implementing a small set of callbacks. This allows
libcluster
to support projects like Partisan.
defp deps do
[{:libcluster, "~> MAJ.MIN"}]
end
You can determine the latest version by running mix hex.info libcluster
in
your shell, or by going to the libcluster
page on Hex.pm.
It is easy to get started using libcluster
, simply decide which strategy you
want to use to form a cluster, define a topology, and then start the Cluster.Supervisor
module in
the supervision tree of an application in your Elixir system, as demonstrated below:
defmodule MyApp.App do
use Application
def start(_type, _args) do
topologies = [
example: [
strategy: Cluster.Strategy.Epmd,
config: [hosts: [:"a@127.0.0.1", :"b@127.0.0.1"]],
]
]
children = [
{Cluster.Supervisor, [topologies, [name: MyApp.ClusterSupervisor]]},
# ..other children..
]
Supervisor.start_link(children, strategy: :one_for_one, name: MyApp.Supervisor)
end
end
The following section describes topology configuration in more detail.
You can configure libcluster
either in your Mix config file (config.exs
) as
shown below, or construct the keyword list structure manually, as shown in the
previous section. Either way, you need to pass the configuration to the
Cluster.Supervisor
module in it's start arguments. If you prefer to use Mix
config files, then simply use Application.get_env(:libcluster, :topologies)
to
get the config that Cluster.Supervisor
expects.
config :libcluster,
topologies: [
example: [
# The selected clustering strategy. Required.
strategy: Cluster.Strategy.Epmd,
# Configuration for the provided strategy. Optional.
config: [hosts: [:"a@127.0.0.1", :"b@127.0.0.1"]],
# The function to use for connecting nodes. The node
# name will be appended to the argument list. Optional
connect: {:net_kernel, :connect_node, []},
# The function to use for disconnecting nodes. The node
# name will be appended to the argument list. Optional
disconnect: {:erlang, :disconnect_node, []},
# The function to use for listing nodes.
# This function must return a list of node names. Optional
list_nodes: {:erlang, :nodes, [:connected]},
]
]
For instructions on configuring each strategy included with libcluster
, please
visit the docs on HexDocs, and look at the
module doc for the strategy you want to use. The authoritative documentation for
each strategy is kept up to date with the module implementing it.
You have a handful of choices with regards to cluster management out of the box:
Cluster.Strategy.Epmd
, which relies onepmd
to connect to a configured set of hosts.Cluster.Strategy.ErlangHosts
, which uses the.hosts.erlang
file to determine which hosts to connect to.Cluster.Strategy.Gossip
, which uses multicast UDP to form a cluster between nodes gossiping a heartbeat.Cluster.Strategy.Kubernetes
, which uses the Kubernetes Metadata API to query nodes based on a label selector and basename.Cluster.Strategy.Kubernetes.DNS
, which uses DNS to join nodes under a shared headless service in a given namespace.Cluster.Strategy.Rancher
, which like the Kubernetes strategy, uses a metadata API to query nodes to cluster with.
You can also define your own strategy implementation, by implementing the
Cluster.Strategy
behavior. This behavior expects you to implement a
start_link/1
callback, optionally overriding child_spec/1
if needed. You don't necessarily have
to start a process as part of your strategy, but since it's very likely you will need to maintain some state, designing your
strategy as an OTP process (e.g. GenServer
) is the ideal method, however any
valid OTP process will work. See the Cluster.Strategy
module for details on
the callbacks you need to implement and the arguments they receive.
If you do not wish to use the default Erlang distribution protocol, you may provide an alternative means of connecting/
disconnecting nodes via the connect
and disconnect
configuration options, if not using Erlang distribution you must provide a list_nodes
implementation as well.
They take a {module, fun, args}
tuple, and append the node name being targeted to the args
list. How to implement distribution in this way is left as an
exercise for the reader, but I recommend taking a look at the Firenest project
currently under development. By default, libcluster
uses Distributed Erlang.
The following list of third-party strategy implementations is not comprehensive, but are known to exist.
- libcluster_ec2 - EC2 clustering strategy based on tags
- libcluster_consul - Consul clustering strategy
MIT