pve-docs/ha-manager.adoc

[[chapter_ha_manager]]
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ha-manager(1)
=============
:pve-toplevel:

NAME
----

ha-manager - Proxmox VE HA Manager

SYNOPSIS
--------

include::ha-manager.1-synopsis.adoc[]

DESCRIPTION
-----------
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High Availability
=================
:pve-toplevel:
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Our modern society depends heavily on information provided by
computers over the network. Mobile devices amplified that dependency,
because people can access the network any time from anywhere. If you
provide such services, it is very important that they are available
most of the time.

We can mathematically define the availability as the ratio of (A) the
total time a service is capable of being used during a given interval
to (B) the length of the interval. It is normally expressed as a
percentage of uptime in a given year.

.Availability - Downtime per Year
[width="60%",cols="<d,d",options="header"]
|===========================================================
|Availability % |Downtime per year
|99             |3.65 days
|99.9 		|8.76 hours
|99.99  	|52.56 minutes
|99.999  	|5.26 minutes
|99.9999  	|31.5 seconds
|99.99999 	|3.15 seconds
|===========================================================

There are several ways to increase availability. The most elegant
solution is to rewrite your software, so that you can run it on
several host at the same time. The software itself need to have a way
to detect errors and do failover. This is relatively easy if you just
want to serve read-only web pages. But in general this is complex, and
sometimes impossible because you cannot modify the software
yourself. The following solutions works without modifying the
software:

* Use reliable ``server'' components
+
NOTE: Computer components with same functionality can have varying
reliability numbers, depending on the component quality. Most vendors
sell components with higher reliability as ``server'' components -
usually at higher price.

* Eliminate single point of failure (redundant components)
** use an uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
** use redundant power supplies on the main boards
** use ECC-RAM
** use redundant network hardware
** use RAID for local storage
** use distributed, redundant storage for VM data

* Reduce downtime
** rapidly accessible administrators (24/7)
** availability of spare parts (other nodes in a {pve} cluster)
** automatic error detection (provided by `ha-manager`)
** automatic failover (provided by `ha-manager`)

Virtualization environments like {pve} make it much easier to reach
high availability because they remove the ``hardware'' dependency. They
also support to setup and use redundant storage and network
devices. So if one host fail, you can simply start those services on
another host within your cluster.

Even better, {pve} provides a software stack called `ha-manager`,
which can do that automatically for you. It is able to automatically
detect errors and do automatic failover.

{pve} `ha-manager` works like an ``automated'' administrator. First, you
configure what resources (VMs, containers, ...) it should
manage. `ha-manager` then observes correct functionality, and handles
service failover to another node in case of errors. `ha-manager` can
also handle normal user requests which may start, stop, relocate and
migrate a service.

But high availability comes at a price. High quality components are
more expensive, and making them redundant duplicates the costs at
least. Additional spare parts increase costs further. So you should
carefully calculate the benefits, and compare with those additional
costs.

TIP: Increasing availability from 99% to 99.9% is relatively
simply. But increasing availability from 99.9999% to 99.99999% is very
hard and costly. `ha-manager` has typical error detection and failover
times of about 2 minutes, so you can get no more than 99.999%
availability.


Requirements
------------

You must meet the following requirements before you start with HA:

* at least three cluster nodes (to get reliable quorum)

* shared storage for VMs and containers

* hardware redundancy (everywhere)

* use reliable “server” components

* hardware watchdog - if not available we fall back to the
  linux kernel software watchdog (`softdog`)

* optional hardware fencing devices


[[ha_manager_resources]]
Resources
---------

We call the primary management unit handled by `ha-manager` a
resource. A resource (also called ``service'') is uniquely
identified by a service ID (SID), which consists of the resource type
and an type specific ID, e.g.: `vm:100`. That example would be a
resource of type `vm` (virtual machine) with the ID 100.

For now we have two important resources types - virtual machines and
containers. One basic idea here is that we can bundle related software
into such VM or container, so there is no need to compose one big
service from other services, like it was done with `rgmanager`. In
general, a HA enabled resource should not depend on other resources.


How It Works
------------

This section provides a detailed description of the {PVE} HA manager
internals. It describes all involved daemons and how they work
together. To provide HA, two daemons run on each node:

`pve-ha-lrm`::

The local resource manager (LRM), which controls the services running on
the local node. It reads the requested states for its services from
the current manager status file and executes the respective commands.

`pve-ha-crm`::

The cluster resource manager (CRM), which makes the cluster wide
decisions. It sends commands to the LRM, processes the results,
and moves resources to other nodes if something fails. The CRM also
handles node fencing.


.Locks in the LRM & CRM
[NOTE]
Locks are provided by our distributed configuration file system (pmxcfs).
They are used to guarantee that each LRM is active once and working. As a
LRM only executes actions when it holds its lock we can mark a failed node
as fenced if we can acquire its lock. This lets us then recover any failed
HA services securely without any interference from the now unknown failed node.
This all gets supervised by the CRM which holds currently the manager master
lock.


Service States
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The CRM use a service state enumeration to record the current service
state. We display this state on the GUI and you can query it using
the `ha-manager` command line tool:

----
# ha-manager status
quorum OK
master elsa (active, Mon Nov 21 07:23:29 2016)
lrm elsa (active, Mon Nov 21 07:23:22 2016)
service ct:100 (elsa, stopped)
service ct:102 (elsa, started)
service vm:501 (elsa, started)
----

Here is the list of possible states:

stopped::

Service is stopped (confirmed by LRM). If the LRM detects a stopped
service is still running, it will stop it again.

request_stop::

Service should be stopped. The CRM waits for confirmation from the
LRM.

started::

Service is active an LRM should start it ASAP if not already running.
If the Service fails and is detected to be not running the LRM
restarts it
(see xref:ha_manager_start_failure_policy[Start Failure Policy]).

fence::

Wait for node fencing (service node is not inside quorate cluster
partition).  As soon as node gets fenced successfully the service will
be recovered to another node, if possible
(see xref:ha_manager_fencing[Fencing]).

freeze::

Do not touch the service state. We use this state while we reboot a
node, or when we restart the LRM daemon
(see xref:ha_manager_package_updates[Package Updates]).

migrate::

Migrate service (live) to other node.

error::

Service is disabled because of LRM errors. Needs manual intervention
(see xref:ha_manager_error_recovery[Error Recovery]).


Local Resource Manager
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The local resource manager (`pve-ha-lrm`) is started as a daemon on
boot and waits until the HA cluster is quorate and thus cluster wide
locks are working.

It can be in three states:

wait for agent lock::

The LRM waits for our exclusive lock. This is also used as idle state if no
service is configured.

active::

The LRM holds its exclusive lock and has services configured.

lost agent lock::

The LRM lost its lock, this means a failure happened and quorum was lost.

After the LRM gets in the active state it reads the manager status
file in `/etc/pve/ha/manager_status` and determines the commands it
has to execute for the services it owns.
For each command a worker gets started, this workers are running in
parallel and are limited to at most 4 by default. This default setting
may be changed through the datacenter configuration key `max_worker`.
When finished the worker process gets collected and its result saved for
the CRM.

.Maximum Concurrent Worker Adjustment Tips
[NOTE]
The default value of at most 4 concurrent workers may be unsuited for
a specific setup. For example may 4 live migrations happen at the same
time, which can lead to network congestions with slower networks and/or
big (memory wise) services. Ensure that also in the worst case no congestion
happens and lower the `max_worker` value if needed. In the contrary, if you
have a particularly powerful high end setup you may also want to increase it.

Each command requested by the CRM is uniquely identifiable by an UID, when
the worker finished its result will be processed and written in the LRM
status file `/etc/pve/nodes/<nodename>/lrm_status`. There the CRM may collect
it and let its state machine - respective the commands output - act on it.

The actions on each service between CRM and LRM are normally always synced.
This means that the CRM requests a state uniquely marked by an UID, the LRM
then executes this action *one time* and writes back the result, also
identifiable by the same UID. This is needed so that the LRM does not
executes an outdated command.
With the exception of the `stop` and the `error` command,
those two do not depend on the result produced and are executed
always in the case of the stopped state and once in the case of
the error state.

.Read the Logs
[NOTE]
The HA Stack logs every action it makes. This helps to understand what
and also why something happens in the cluster. Here its important to see
what both daemons, the LRM and the CRM, did. You may use
`journalctl -u pve-ha-lrm` on the node(s) where the service is and
the same command for the pve-ha-crm on the node which is the current master.

Cluster Resource Manager
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The cluster resource manager (`pve-ha-crm`) starts on each node and
waits there for the manager lock, which can only be held by one node
at a time.  The node which successfully acquires the manager lock gets
promoted to the CRM master.

It can be in three states:

wait for agent lock::

The CRM waits for our exclusive lock. This is also used as idle state if no
service is configured

active::

The CRM holds its exclusive lock and has services configured

lost agent lock::

The CRM lost its lock, this means a failure happened and quorum was lost.

It main task is to manage the services which are configured to be highly
available and try to always enforce them to the wanted state, e.g.: a
enabled service will be started if its not running, if it crashes it will
be started again. Thus it dictates the LRM the actions it needs to execute.

When an node leaves the cluster quorum, its state changes to unknown.
If the current CRM then can secure the failed nodes lock, the services
will be 'stolen' and restarted on another node.

When a cluster member determines that it is no longer in the cluster
quorum, the LRM waits for a new quorum to form. As long as there is no
quorum the node cannot reset the watchdog. This will trigger a reboot
after the watchdog then times out, this happens after 60 seconds.


Configuration
-------------

The HA stack is well integrated into the {pve} API. So, for example,
HA can be configured via the `ha-manager` command line interface, or
the {pve} web interface - both interfaces provide an easy way to
manage HA. Automation tools can use the API directly.

All HA configuration files are within `/etc/pve/ha/`, so they get
automatically distributed to the cluster nodes, and all nodes share
the same HA configuration.


Resources
~~~~~~~~~

The resource configuration file `/etc/pve/ha/resources.cfg` stores
the list of resources managed by `ha-manager`. A resource configuration
inside that list look like this:

----
<type>: <name>
	<property> <value>
	...
----

It starts with a resource type followed by a resource specific name,
separated with colon. Together this forms the HA resource ID, which is
used by all `ha-manager` commands to uniquely identify a resource
(example: `vm:100` or `ct:101`). The next lines contain additional
properties:

include::ha-resources-opts.adoc[]

Here is a real world example with one VM and one container. As you see,
the syntax of those files is really simple, so it is even posiible to
read or edit those files using your favorite editor:

.Configuration Example (`/etc/pve/ha/resources.cfg`)
----
vm: 501
    state started
    max_relocate 2

ct: 102
    # Note: use default settings for everything
----

Above config was generated using the `ha-manager` command line tool:

----
# ha-manager add vm:501 --state started --max_relocate 2
# ha-manager add ct:102
----


[[ha_manager_groups]]
Groups
~~~~~~

The HA group configuration file `/etc/pve/ha/groups.cfg` is used to
define groups of cluster nodes. A resource can be restricted to run
only on the members of such group. A group configuration look like
this:

----
group: <group>
       nodes <node_list>
       <property> <value>
       ...
----

include::ha-groups-opts.adoc[]

A commom requirement is that a resource should run on a specific
node. Usually the resource is able to run on other nodes, so you can define
an unrestricted group with a single member:

----
# ha-manager groupadd prefer_node1 --nodes node1
----

For bigger clusters, it makes sense to define a more detailed failover
behavior. For example, you may want to run a set of services on
`node1` if possible. If `node1` is not available, you want to run them
equally splitted on `node2` and `node3`. If those nodes also fail the
services should run on `node4`. To achieve this you could set the node
list to:

----
# ha-manager groupadd mygroup1 -nodes "node1:2,node2:1,node3:1,node4"
----

Another use case is if a resource uses other resources only available
on specific nodes, lets say `node1` and `node2`. We need to make sure
that HA manager does not use other nodes, so we need to create a
restricted group with said nodes:

----
# ha-manager groupadd mygroup2 -nodes "node1,node2" -restricted
----

Above commands created the following group configuration fils:

.Configuration Example (`/etc/pve/ha/groups.cfg`)
----
group: prefer_node1
       nodes node1

group: mygroup1
       nodes node2:1,node4,node1:2,node3:1

group: mygroup2
       nodes node2,node1
       restricted 1
----


The `nofailback` options is mostly useful to avoid unwanted resource
movements during administartion tasks. For example, if you need to
migrate a service to a node which hasn't the highest priority in the
group, you need to tell the HA manager to not move this service
instantly back by setting the `nofailback` option.

Another scenario is when a service was fenced and it got recovered to
another node. The admin tries to repair the fenced node and brings it
up online again to investigate the failure cause and check if it runs
stable again. Setting the `nofailback` flag prevents that the
recovered services move straight back to the fenced node.


Node Power Status
-----------------

If a node needs maintenance you should migrate and or relocate all
services which are required to run always on another node first.
After that you can stop the LRM and CRM services. But note that the
watchdog triggers if you stop it with active services.


[[ha_manager_package_updates]]
Package Updates
---------------

When updating the ha-manager you should do one node after the other, never
all at once for various reasons. First, while we test our software
thoughtfully, a bug affecting your specific setup cannot totally be ruled out.
Upgrading one node after the other and checking the functionality of each node
after finishing the update helps to recover from an eventual problems, while
updating all could render you in a broken cluster state and is generally not
good practice.

Also, the {pve} HA stack uses a request acknowledge protocol to perform
actions between the cluster and the local resource manager. For restarting,
the LRM makes a request to the CRM to freeze all its services. This prevents
that they get touched by the Cluster during the short time the LRM is restarting.
After that the LRM may safely close the watchdog during a restart.
Such a restart happens on a update and as already stated a active master
CRM is needed to acknowledge the requests from the LRM, if this is not the case
the update process can be too long which, in the worst case, may result in
a watchdog reset.


[[ha_manager_fencing]]
Fencing
-------

On node failures, fencing ensures that the erroneous node is
guaranteed to be offline. This is required to make sure that no
resource runs twice when it gets recovered on another node. This is a
really important task, because without, it would not be possible to
recover a resource on another node.

If a node would not get fenced, it would be in an unknown state where
it may have still access to shared resources. This is really
dangerous!  Imagine that every network but the storage one broke. Now,
while not reachable from the public network, the VM still runs and
writes to the shared storage.

If we then simply start up this VM on another node, we would get a
dangerous race conditions because we write from both nodes. Such
condition can destroy all VM data and the whole VM could be rendered
unusable. The recovery could also fail if the storage protects from
multiple mounts.


How {pve} Fences
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are different methods to fence a node, for example, fence
devices which cut off the power from the node or disable their
communication completely. Those are often quite expensive and bring
additional critical components into a system, because if they fail you
cannot recover any service.

We thus wanted to integrate a simpler fencing method, which does not
require additional external hardware. This can be done using
watchdog timers.

.Possible Fencing Methods
- external power switches
- isolate nodes by disabling complete network traffic on the switch
- self fencing using watchdog timers

Watchdog timers are widely used in critical and dependable systems
since the beginning of micro controllers. They are often independent
and simple integrated circuits which are used to detect and recover
from computer malfunctions.

During normal operation, `ha-manager` regularly resets the watchdog
timer to prevent it from elapsing. If, due to a hardware fault or
program error, the computer fails to reset the watchdog, the timer
will elapse and triggers a reset of the whole server (reboot).

Recent server motherboards often include such hardware watchdogs, but
these need to be configured. If no watchdog is available or
configured, we fall back to the Linux Kernel 'softdog'. While still
reliable, it is not independent of the servers hardware, and thus has
a lower reliability than a hardware watchdog.

Configure Hardware Watchdog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By default all watchdog modules are blocked for security reasons as they are
like a loaded gun if not correctly initialized.
If you have a hardware watchdog available remove its kernel module from the
blacklist, load it with insmod and restart the `watchdog-mux` service or reboot
the node.

Recover Fenced Services
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After a node failed and its fencing was successful we start to recover services
to other available nodes and restart them there so that they can provide service
again.

The selection of the node on which the services gets recovered is influenced
by the users group settings, the currently active nodes and their respective
active service count.
First we build a set out of the intersection between user selected nodes and
available nodes. Then the subset with the highest priority of those nodes
gets chosen as possible nodes for recovery. We select the node with the
currently lowest active service count as a new node for the service.
That minimizes the possibility of an overload, which else could cause an
unresponsive node and as a result a chain reaction of node failures in the
cluster.


[[ha_manager_start_failure_policy]]
Start Failure Policy
---------------------

The start failure policy comes in effect if a service failed to start on a
node once ore more times. It can be used to configure how often a restart
should be triggered on the same node and how often a service should be
relocated so that it gets a try to be started on another node.
The aim of this policy is to circumvent temporary unavailability of shared
resources on a specific node. For example, if a shared storage isn't available
on a quorate node anymore, e.g. network problems, but still on other nodes,
the relocate policy allows then that the service gets started nonetheless.

There are two service start recover policy settings which can be configured
specific for each resource.

max_restart::

Maximum number of tries to restart an failed service on the actual
node.  The default is set to one.

max_relocate::

Maximum number of tries to relocate the service to a different node.
A relocate only happens after the max_restart value is exceeded on the
actual node. The default is set to one.

NOTE: The relocate count state will only reset to zero when the
service had at least one successful start. That means if a service is
re-enabled without fixing the error only the restart policy gets
repeated.


[[ha_manager_error_recovery]]
Error Recovery
--------------

If after all tries the service state could not be recovered it gets
placed in an error state. In this state the service won't get touched
by the HA stack anymore.  To recover from this state you should follow
these steps:

* bring the resource back into a safe and consistent state (e.g.,
killing its process)

* disable the ha resource to place it in an stopped state

* fix the error which led to this failures

* *after* you fixed all errors you may enable the service again


[[ha_manager_service_operations]]
Service Operations
------------------

This are how the basic user-initiated service operations (via
`ha-manager`) work.

enable::

The service will be started by the LRM if not already running.

disable::

The service will be stopped by the LRM if running.

migrate/relocate::

The service will be relocated (live) to another node.

remove::

The service will be removed from the HA managed resource list. Its
current state will not be touched.

start/stop::

`start` and `stop` commands can be issued to the resource specific tools
(like `qm` or `pct`), they will forward the request to the
`ha-manager` which then will execute the action and set the resulting
service state (enabled, disabled).


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