zrepl/docs/configuration/overview.rst
Christian Schwarz e0b5bd75f8 endpoint: refactor, fix stale holds on initial replication failure, zfs-abstractions subcmd, more efficient ZFS queries
The motivation for this recatoring are based on two independent issues:

- @JMoVS found that the changes merged as part of #259 slowed his OS X
  based installation down significantly.
  Analysis of the zfs command logging introduced in #296 showed that
  `zfs holds` took most of the execution time, and they pointed out
  that not all of those `zfs holds` invocations were actually necessary.
  I.e.: zrepl was inefficient about retrieving information from ZFS.

- @InsanePrawn found that failures on initial replication would lead
  to step holds accumulating on the sending side, i.e. they would never
  be cleaned up in the HintMostRecentCommonAncestor RPC handler.
  That was because we only sent that RPC if there was a most recent
  common ancestor detected during replication planning.
  @InsanePrawn prototyped an implementation of a `zrepl zfs-abstractions release`
  command to mitigate the situation.
  As part of that development work and back-and-forth with @problame,
  it became evident that the abstractions that #259 built on top of
  zfs in package endpoint (step holds, replication cursor,
  last-received-hold), were not well-represented for re-use in the
  `zrepl zfs-abstractions release` subocommand prototype.

This commit refactors package endpoint to address both of these issues:

- endpoint abstractions now share an interface `Abstraction` that, among
  other things, provides a uniform `Destroy()` method.
  However, that method should not be destroyed directly but instead
  the package-level `BatchDestroy` function should be used in order
  to allow for a migration to zfs channel programs in the future.

- endpoint now has a query facitilty (`ListAbstractions`) which is
  used to find on-disk
    - step holds and bookmarks
    - replication cursors (v1, v2)
    - last-received-holds
  By describing the query in a struct, we can centralized the retrieval
  of information via the ZFS CLI and only have to be clever once.
  We are "clever" in the following ways:
  - When asking for hold-based abstractions, we only run `zfs holds` on
    snapshot that have `userrefs` > 0
    - To support this functionality, add field `UserRefs` to zfs.FilesystemVersion
      and retrieve it anywhere we retrieve zfs.FilesystemVersion from ZFS.
  - When asking only for bookmark-based abstractions, we only run
    `zfs list -t bookmark`, not with snapshots.
  - Currently unused (except for CLI) per-filesystem concurrent lookup
  - Option to only include abstractions with CreateTXG in a specified range

- refactor `endpoint`'s various ZFS info  retrieval methods to use
  `ListAbstractions`

- rename the `zrepl holds list` command to `zrepl zfs-abstractions list`
- make `zrepl zfs-abstractions list` consume endpoint.ListAbstractions

- Add a `ListStale` method which, given a query template,
  lists stale holds and bookmarks.
  - it uses replication cursor has different modes
- the new `zrepl zfs-abstractions release-{all,stale}` commands can be used
  to remove abstractions of package endpoint

- Adjust HintMostRecentCommonAncestor RPC for stale-holds cleanup:
    - send it also if no most recent common ancestor exists between sender and receiver
    - have the sender clean up its abstractions when it receives the RPC
      with no most recent common ancestor, using `ListStale`
    - Due to changed semantics, bump the protocol version.

- Adjust HintMostRecentCommonAncestor RPC for performance problems
  encountered by @JMoVS
    - by default, per (job,fs)-combination, only consider cleaning
      step holds in the createtxg range
      `[last replication cursor,conservatively-estimated-receive-side-version)`
    - this behavior ensures resumability at cost proportional to the
      time that replication was donw
    - however, as explained in a comment, we might leak holds if
      the zrepl daemon stops running
    - that  trade-off is acceptable because in the presumably rare
      this might happen the user has two tools at their hand:
    - Tool 1: run `zrepl zfs-abstractions release-stale`
    - Tool 2: use env var `ZREPL_ENDPOINT_SENDER_HINT_MOST_RECENT_STEP_HOLD_CLEANUP_MODE`
      to adjust the lower bound of the createtxg range (search for it in the code).
      The env var can also be used to disable hold-cleanup on the
      send-side entirely.

supersedes closes #293
supersedes closes #282
fixes #280
fixes #278

Additionaly, we fixed a couple of bugs:

- zfs: fix half-nil error reporting of dataset-does-not-exist for ZFSListChan and ZFSBookmark

- endpoint: Sender's `HintMostRecentCommonAncestor` handler would not
  check whether access to the specified filesystem was allowed.
2020-04-18 12:26:03 +02:00

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Overview & Terminology
======================
All work zrepl does is performed by the zrepl daemon which is configured in a single YAML configuration file loaded on startup.
The following paths are considered:
* If set, the location specified via the global ``--config`` flag
* ``/etc/zrepl/zrepl.yml``
* ``/usr/local/etc/zrepl/zrepl.yml``
The ``zrepl configcheck`` subcommand can be used to validate the configuration.
The command will output nothing and exit with zero status code if the configuration is valid.
The error messages vary in quality and usefulness: please report confusing config errors to the tracking :issue:`155`.
Full example configs such as in the :ref:`tutorial` or the :sampleconf:`/` directory might also be helpful.
However, copy-pasting examples is no substitute for reading documentation!
Config File Structure
---------------------
.. code-block:: yaml
global: ...
jobs:
- name: backup
type: push
- ...
zrepl is configured using a single YAML configuration file with two main sections: ``global`` and ``jobs``.
The ``global`` section is filled with sensible defaults and is covered later in this chapter.
The ``jobs`` section is a list of jobs which we are going to explain now.
.. _job-overview:
Jobs \& How They Work Together
------------------------------
A *job* is the unit of activity tracked by the zrepl daemon.
The ``type`` of a job determines its role in a replication setup and in snapshot management.
Jobs are identified by their ``name``, both in log files and the ``zrepl status`` command.
Replication always happens between a pair of jobs: one is the **active side**, and one the **passive side**.
The active side connects to the passive side using a :ref:`transport <transport>` and starts executing the replication logic.
The passive side responds to requests from the active side after checking its permissions.
The following table shows how different job types can be combined to achieve **both push and pull mode setups**.
Note that snapshot-creation denoted by "(snap)" is orthogonal to whether a job is active or passive.
+-----------------------+--------------+----------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Setup name | active side | passive side | use case |
+=======================+==============+==================================+====================================================================================+
| Push mode | ``push`` | ``sink`` | * Laptop backup |
| | (snap) | | * NAS behind NAT to offsite |
+-----------------------+--------------+----------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pull mode | ``pull`` | ``source`` | * Central backup-server for many nodes |
| | | (snap) | * Remote server to NAS behind NAT |
+-----------------------+--------------+----------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Local replication | | ``push`` + ``sink`` in one config | * Backup FreeBSD boot pool |
| | | with :ref:`local transport <transport-local>` | |
+-----------------------+--------------+----------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Snap & prune-only | ``snap`` | N/A | * | Snapshots & pruning but no replication |
| | (snap) | | | required |
| | | | * Workaround for :ref:`source-side pruning <prune-workaround-source-side-pruning>` |
+-----------------------+--------------+----------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
How the Active Side Works
-------------------------
The active side (:ref:`push <job-push>` and :ref:`pull <job-pull>` job) executes the replication and pruning logic:
* Wakeup because of finished snapshotting (``push`` job) or pull interval ticker (``pull`` job).
* Connect to the corresponding passive side using a :ref:`transport <transport>` and instantiate an RPC client.
* Replicate data from the sending to the receiving side (see below).
* Prune on sender & receiver.
.. TIP::
The progress of the active side can be watched live using the ``zrepl status`` subcommand.
How the Passive Side Works
--------------------------
The passive side (:ref:`sink <job-sink>` and :ref:`source <job-source>`) waits for connections from the corresponding active side,
using the transport listener type specified in the ``serve`` field of the job configuration.
Each transport listener provides a client's identity to the passive side job.
It uses the client identity for access control:
* The ``sink`` job maps requests from different client identities to their respective sub-filesystem tree ``root_fs/${client_identity}``.
* The ``source`` job has a whitelist of client identities that are allowed pull access.
.. TIP::
The implementation of the ``sink`` job requires that the connecting client identities be a valid ZFS filesystem name components.
.. _overview-how-replication-works:
How Replication Works
---------------------
One of the major design goals of the replication module is to avoid any duplication of the nontrivial logic.
As such, the code works on abstract senders and receiver **endpoints**, where typically one will be implemented by a local program object and the other is an RPC client instance.
Regardless of push- or pull-style setup, the logic executes on the active side, i.e. in the ``push`` or ``pull`` job.
The following steps take place during replication and can be monitored using the ``zrepl status`` subcommand:
* Plan the replication:
* Compare sender and receiver filesystem snapshots
* Build the **replication plan**
* Per filesystem, compute a diff between sender and receiver snapshots
* Build a list of replication steps
* If possible, use incremental and resumable sends (``zfs send -i``)
* Otherwise, use full send of most recent snapshot on sender
* Retry on errors that are likely temporary (i.e. network failures).
* Give up on filesystems where a permanent error was received over RPC.
* Execute the plan
* Perform replication steps in the following order:
Among all filesystems with pending replication steps, pick the filesystem whose next replication step's snapshot is the oldest.
* Create placeholder filesystems on the receiving side to mirror the dataset paths on the sender to ``root_fs/${client_identity}``.
* Acquire send-side *step-holds* on the step's `from` and `to` snapshots.
* Perform the replication step.
* Move the **replication cursor** bookmark on the sending side (see below).
* Move the **last-received-hold** on the receiving side (see below).
* Release the send-side step-holds.
The idea behind the execution order of replication steps is that if the sender snapshots all filesystems simultaneously at fixed intervals, the receiver will have all filesystems snapshotted at time ``T1`` before the first snapshot at ``T2 = T1 + $interval`` is replicated.
.. _replication-cursor-and-last-received-hold:
**Replication cursor** bookmark and **last-received-hold** are managed by zrepl to ensure that future replications can always be done incrementally:
the replication cursor is a send-side bookmark of the most recent successfully replicated snapshot,
and the last-received-hold is a hold of that snapshot on the receiving side.
The replication cursor has the format ``#zrepl_CUSOR_G_<GUID>_J_<JOBNAME>``.
The last-received-hold tag has the format ``#zrepl_last_received_J_<JOBNAME>``.
Encoding the job name in the names ensures that multiple sending jobs can replicate the same filesystem to different receivers without interference.
The ``zrepl holds list`` provides a listing of all bookmarks and holds managed by zrepl.
.. _replication-placeholder-property:
**Placeholder filesystems** on the receiving side are regular ZFS filesystems with the placeholder property ``zrepl:placeholder=on``.
Placeholders allow the receiving side to mirror the sender's ZFS dataset hierarchy without replicating every filesystem at every intermediary dataset path component.
Consider the following example: ``S/H/J`` shall be replicated to ``R/sink/job/S/H/J``, but neither ``S/H`` nor ``S`` shall be replicated.
ZFS requires the existence of ``R/sink/job/S`` and ``R/sink/job/S/H`` in order to receive into ``R/sink/job/S/H/J``.
Thus, zrepl creates the parent filesystems as placeholders on the receiving side.
If at some point ``S/H`` and ``S`` shall be replicated, the receiving side invalidates the placeholder flag automatically.
The ``zrepl test placeholder`` command can be used to check whether a filesystem is a placeholder.
.. ATTENTION::
Currently, zrepl does not replicate filesystem properties.
When receiving a filesystem, it is never mounted (`-u` flag) and `mountpoint=none` is set.
This is temporary and being worked on :issue:`24`.
.. NOTE::
More details can be found in the design document :repomasterlink:`replication/design.md`.
.. _jobs-multiple-jobs:
Multiple Jobs & More than 2 Machines
------------------------------------
.. ATTENTION::
When using multiple jobs across single or multiple machines, the following rules are critical to avoid race conditions & data loss:
1. The sets of ZFS filesystems matched by the ``filesystems`` filter fields must be disjoint across all jobs configured on a machine.
2. The ZFS filesystem subtrees of jobs with ``root_fs`` must be disjoint.
3. Across all zrepl instances on all machines in the replication domain, there must be a 1:1 correspondence between active and passive jobs.
Explanations & exceptions to above rules are detailed below.
If you would like to see improvements to multi-job setups, please `open an issue on GitHub <https://github.com/zrepl/zrepl/issues/new>`_.
No Overlapping
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jobs run independently of each other.
If two jobs match the same filesystem with their ``filesystems`` filter, they will operate on that filesystem independently and potentially in parallel.
For example, if job A prunes snapshots that job B is planning to replicate, the replication will fail because B assumed the snapshot to still be present.
However, the next replication attempt will re-examine the situation from scratch and should work.
N push jobs to 1 sink
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The :ref:`sink job <job-sink>` namespaces by client identity.
It is thus safe to push to one sink job with different client identities.
If the push jobs have the same client identity, the filesystems matched by the push jobs must be disjoint to avoid races.
N pull jobs from 1 source
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Multiple pull jobs pulling from the same source have potential for race conditions during pruning:
each pull job prunes the source side independently, causing replication-prune and prune-prune races.
There is currently no way for a pull job to filter which snapshots it should attempt to replicate.
Thus, it is not possible to just manually assert that the prune rules of all pull jobs are disjoint to avoid replication-prune and prune-prune races.