Monitor Replication with CLI and Web Console


Overview

We should be able to monitor multi-supplier replication topologies, its lag times and other agreement parameters. It should include even complex situations with chains of different instances where M1 -> M2 -> M3 but M1 is not replicated directly to M3.

This document is concentrated on describing the logic behind the replication report generation.

Use Cases

This feature can be used through CLI and Web UI. The monitoring feature is specifically very useful when you have a topology with more than 2 replicas.

Design

Initialize the report generation

To generate replication report we should run the CLI command:

dsconf ldap://server1.example.com:38901 -D "cn=Directory Manager" -w password replication monitor

You can also supply credentials (-c) and/or aliases (-a).

Also, we can run the report from Web Console - Monitoring tab -> Replication -> Sync Report -> Generate Report button.

It will initiate the process during which the program will go through the replication topology and print agreement and replica details.

Command Line Function

The replication monitor structure is constructed out of three elements:

Get Credentials Function

This function is called when we need to determine credentials for ‘host:port’ pair. It checks if the credentials were already supplied and if not, it requests user to provide it.

Main Generate Report Function

The function can be called as this:

repl_monitor = ReplicationMonitor(inst)
report_dict = repl_monitor.generate_report(get_credentials)

get credentials function should be supplied as a parameter here. And then, the method returns a dictionary with the report data.

ReplicationMonitor object can be used in any other scripts when we need to get a full topology report.

Format The Report Data

Next and final thing, we should format the data so the user can easily view it. It has two options here:

  1. Make a JSON output out of the data and print it directly. We need the JSON for Web Console processing.

  2. Print the data in a formatted maner to STDOUT.

Logic Flow

The main logic happens in generate_report() function:

  1. First, we get the replication data for the initial instance (the one we run CLI or UI from). It incudes agreements and relpica.

  2. We store the data in a dictionary as our_dict[“host:port:protocol”] = data

  3. As we discover new agreements, we set the host information as a key but we set the value to None

  4. Then, run though the items that don’t have the values and trying to get the credentials for them using our supplied get_credentials function

  5. Is the credentials are valid, we connect to the instance and get the replication data which we assign as the repication report dictionary value. The new list of agreements is assigns the same was as in Step 3

  6. When we finish running through the list and eveything is processed, we remove :protocol from the repoication report dictionary keys.

  7. And finally, we return the dictionary.

Web Console Implementation Details

The Sync Report tab is dony with ReactJS. It copies CLI tool functionality with a small differences:

Origin

Author

spichugi@redhat.com

Last modified on 1 March 2024