Rebuild a datacenter’s replicas

A rebuild operation runs the nodetool rebuild command, rebuilding data on a single node by streaming from another (source) datacenter (DC). Run this operation on each node after defining a source datacenter from which to stream data. This command streams data from another datacenter to rebuild the local DC’s replicas.

Redistribute data on remaining nodes after one or more nodes or datacenters are terminated or added.

Performance impact

Rebuilding nodes ensures high availability of data and avoids single points of failure.

Prerequisites

A prepared environment on either bare-metal/VM or an existing Kubernetes cluster.

Example

A single datacenter (dc1) is deployed on the Data Plane Kubernetes cluster. A Control Plane Kubernetes cluster exists.

Workflow of user and operators

Perform a backup of the node.
User defines the rebuild CassandraTask. Specify the affected node as offline.
User submits a rebuild CassandraTask to the Data Plane Kubernetes cluster where the datacenter is deployed.
DC-operator detects new task custom resource definition (CRD).
DC-operator iterates one rack at a time.
DC-operator triggers and monitors rebuild operations one pod at a time.
DC-operator reports task progress and status.
User requests a status report of the rebuild CassandraTask with the kubectl command, and views the status response.

Rebuild a datacenter’s replicas

Modify the rebuild-dc1.cassandratask.yaml file.

Here is a sample:
```
apiVersion: control.k8ssandra.io/v1alpha1
kind: CassandraTask
metadata:
  name: rebuild-dc1
spec:
  datacenter:
    name: dc1
    namespace: demo
  jobs:
    - name: rebuild-dc1
      command: rebuild
      args:
        keyspace_name: KEYSPACE_NAME
```
Replace KEYSPACE_NAME with the name of the keyspace to rebuild.

Key options:
- metadata.name: a unique identifier within the Kubernetes namespace where the task is submitted. While the name can be any value, consider including the cluster name to prevent collision with other options.
- spec.datacenter: a unique namespace and name combination used to determine which datacenter is the source for this operation.
- spec.jobs[0].command: MUST be rebuild for this operation.
- Optional: spec.jobs[0].args.keyspace_name: restricts this operation to a particular keyspace. Omitting this value results in ALL keyspaces being rebuilt. By default all keyspaces are rebuilt.
Submit the rebuild CassandraTask custom resource definition to Data Plane Kubernetes cluster where the datacenter is deployed with this command:
```
kubectl apply -f rebuild-dc1.cassandratask.yaml
```
Submit the rebuild CassandraTask object to the Kubernetes cluster where the specified datacenter is deployed.

If nodetool rebuild is interrupted before completion, restart it by re-entering the command. The process resumes from the point at which it was interrupted.

The DC-level operators perform a rolling rebuild operation, one node at a time. The order is determined lexicographically, also known as Dictionary order, starting with rack names and then continuing with node (pod) names.

Monitor the rebuild operation progress with this kubectl command:

kubectl get cassandratask rebuild-dc1 | yq .status

Sample results

...
status:
  completionTime: "2022-10-23T23:34:38Z"
  conditions:
  - lastTransitionTime: "2022-10-23T23:34:08Z"
    status: "True"
    type: Running
  - lastTransitionTime: "2022-10-23T23:34:39Z"
    status: "True"
    type: Complete
  startTime: "2022-10-23T23:34:08Z"
  succeeded: 3

The DC-level operators set the startTime field prior to starting the rebuild operation. They update the completionTime field when the rebuild operation is completed.

The sample output indicates that the task is completed with the type: Complete status condition set to True. The succeeded: 3 field indicates that three (3) nodes (or pods) completed the requested task successfully. A failed field tracks a running count of pods that failed the rebuild operation.

Monitor the DSE node logs on the Data Plane cluster to verify that the datacenter is rebuilt with this command:

kubectl logs -f demo-dc1-rack3-sts-1 -c server-system-logger | grep "finished rebuild"

Sample results

INFO  [pool-18-thread-1] 2022-10-23 23:32:18,088  StorageService.java:1895 - finished rebuild for (All keyspaces), (All tokens), 1 streaming connections, NORMAL,  included DCs: dc1 after 5 seconds receiving 3.52 MiB.

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