machi/doc/humming_consensus_demo.md

Table of contents

• Hand-on experiments with Machi and Humming Consensus
• Using the network partition simulator and convergence demo test code

# Hand-on experiments with Machi and Humming Consensus

Prerequisites

Please refer to the Machi development environment prerequisites doc for Machi developer environment prerequisites.

## Clone and compile the code

Please see the Machi 'clone and compile' doc for the short list of steps required to fetch the Machi source code from GitHub and to compile & test Machi.

Running three Machi instances on a single machine

All of the commands that should be run at your login shell (e.g. Bash, c-shell) can be cut-and-pasted from this document directly to your login shell prompt.

Run the following command:

make stagedevrel

This will create a directory structure like this:

      |-dev1-|... stand-alone Machi app directories
|-dev-|-dev2-|... stand-alone Machi app directories
      |-dev3-|... stand-alone Machi app directories

# Using the network partition simulator and convergence demo test code

This is the demo code mentioned in the presentation that Scott Lystig Fritchie gave at the RICON 2015 conference.

• slides (PDF format)
• video

A complete example of all input and output

If you don't have an Erlang/OTP 17 runtime environment available, please see this file for full input and output of a strong consistency length=3 chain test: https://gist.github.com/slfritchie/8352efc88cc18e62c72c This file contains all commands input and all simulator output from a sample run of the simulator.

To help interpret the output of the test, please skip ahead to the "The test output is very verbose" section.

Prerequisites

If you don't have git and/or the Erlang 17 runtime system available on your OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, or Solaris machine, please take a look at the Prerequistes section first. When you have installed the prerequisite software, please return back here.

Clone and compile the code

Please briefly visit the Clone and compile the code section. When finished, please return back here.

Run an interactive Erlang CLI shell

Run the following command at your login shell:

erl -pz .eunit ebin deps/*/ebin

If you are using Erlang/OTP version 17, you should see some CLI output that looks like this:

Erlang/OTP 17 [erts-6.4] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]

Eshell V6.4  (abort with ^G)
1>

The test output is very verbose ... what are the important parts?

The output of the Erlang command machi_chain_manager1_converge_demo:help() will display the following guide to the output of the tests.

A visualization of the convergence behavior of the chain self-management
algorithm for Machi.

  1. Set up some server and chain manager pairs.
  2. Create a number of different network partition scenarios, where
     (simulated) partitions may be symmetric or asymmetric.  Then stop changing
     the partitions and keep the simulated network stable (and perhaps broken).
  3. Run a number of iterations of the algorithm in parallel by poking each
     of the manager processes on a random'ish basis.
  4. Afterward, fetch the chain transition changes made by each FLU and
     verify that no transition was unsafe.

During the iteration periods, the following is a cheatsheet for the output.
See the internal source for interpreting the rest of the output.

    'SET partitions = '

        A pair-wise list of actors which cannot send messages.  The
        list is uni-directional.  If there are three servers (a,b,c),
        and if the partitions list is '[{a,b},{b,c}]' then all
        messages from a->b and b->c will be dropped, but any other
        sender->recipient messages will be delivered successfully.

    'x uses:'

        The FLU x has made an internal state transition and is using
        this epoch's projection as operating chain configuration.  The
        rest of the line is a summary of the projection.

    'CONFIRM epoch {N}'

        This message confirms that all of the servers listed in the
        UPI and repairing lists of the projection at epoch {N} have
        agreed to use this projection because they all have written
        this projection to their respective private projection stores.
        The chain is now usable by/available to all clients.

    'Sweet, private projections are stable'

        This report announces that this iteration of the test cycle
        has passed successfully.  The report that follows briefly
        summarizes the latest private projection used by each
        participating server.  For example, when in strong consistency
        mode with 'a' as a witness and 'b' and 'c' as real servers:

        %% Legend:
        %% server name, epoch ID, UPI list, repairing list, down list, ...
        %%                         ... witness list, 'false' (a constant value)

        [{a,{{1116,<<23,143,246,55>>},[a,b],[],[c],[a],false}},
         {b,{{1116,<<23,143,246,55>>},[a,b],[],[c],[a],false}}]

        Both servers 'a' and 'b' agree on epoch 1116 with epoch ID
        {1116,<<23,143,246,55>>} where UPI=[a,b], repairing=[],
        down=[c], and witnesses=[a].

        Server 'c' is not shown because 'c' has wedged itself OOS (out
        of service) by configuring a chain length of zero.

        If no servers are listed in the report (i.e. only '[]' is
        displayed), then all servers have wedged themselves OOS, and
        the chain is unavailable.

    'DoIt,' 

        This marks a group of tick events which trigger the manager
        processes to evaluate their environment and perhaps make a
        state transition.

A long chain of 'DoIt,DoIt,DoIt,' means that the chain state has
(probably) settled to a stable configuration, which is the goal of the
algorithm.

Press control-c to interrupt the test....".

Run a test in eventual consistency mode

Run the following command at the Erlang CLI prompt:

machi_chain_manager1_converge_demo:t(3, [{private_write_verbose,true}]).

The first argument, 3, is the number of servers to participate in the chain. Please note:

• Chain lengths as short as 1 or 2 are valid, but the results are a bit boring.
• Chain lengths as long as 7 or 9 can be used, but they may suffer from longer periods of churn/instability before all chain managers reach agreement via humming consensus. (It is future work to shorten the worst of the unstable churn latencies.)
• In eventual consistency mode, chain lengths may be even numbers, e.g. 2, 4, or 6.
• The simulator will choose partition events from the permutations of all 1, 2, and 3 node partition pairs. The total runtime will increase dramatically with chain length.
  • Chain length 2: about 3 partition cases
  • Chain length 3: about 35 partition cases
  • Chain length 4: about 230 partition cases
  • Chain length 5: about 1100 partition cases

Run a test in strong consistency mode (with witnesses):

NOTE: Due to a bug in the test code, please do not try to run the convergence test in strong consistency mode and also without the correct minority number of witness servers! If in doubt, please run the commands shown below exactly.

Run the following command at the Erlang CLI prompt:

machi_chain_manager1_converge_demo:t(3, [{private_write_verbose,true}, {consistency_mode, cp_mode}, {witnesses, [a]}]).

The first argument, 3, is the number of servers to participate in the chain. Chain lengths as long as 7 or 9 can be used, but they may suffer from longer periods of churn/instability before all chain managers reach agreement via humming consensus.

Due to the bug mentioned above, please use the following commands when running with chain lengths of 5 or 7, respectively.

machi_chain_manager1_converge_demo:t(5, [{private_write_verbose,true}, {consistency_mode, cp_mode}, {witnesses, [a,b]}]).
machi_chain_manager1_converge_demo:t(7, [{private_write_verbose,true}, {consistency_mode, cp_mode}, {witnesses, [a,b,c]}]).