Cluster operations using pxctl
This document outlines how to manage your Portworx cluster operation with pxctl cluster. Run the /opt/pwx/bin/pxctl cluster with the --help flag to list the available subcommands and flags.
Listing all nodes in a cluster
To list all nodes in your Portworx cluster, run:
pxctl cluster list
Cluster ID: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-0242ac110002
Status: OK
Nodes in the cluster:
ID DATA IP CPU MEM TOTAL MEM FREE CONTAINERS VERSION STATUS
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-4782959264bc X.X.X.243 0.125078 34 GB 33 GB N/A 1.1.4-6b35842 Online
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-de2699fa39b4 X.X.X.171 0.187617 34 GB 33 GB N/A 1.1.4-6b35842 Online
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-bc72878d4be5 X.X.X.189 0.125078 34 GB 33 GB N/A 1.1.4-6b35842 Online
Inspecting a node
Use the following command to get information on a node in the cluster:
pxctl cluster inspect xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-bc72878d4be5
ID : xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-bc72878d4be5
Mgmt IP : X.X.X.189
Data IP : X.X.X.189
CPU : 0.8755472170106317
Mem Total : 33697398784
Mem Used : 702279680
Status : Online
Containers: There are no running containers on this node.
Deleting a node in a cluster
Here is how to delete a node:
pxctl cluster delete xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-4782959264bc
node xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-4782959264bc deleted successfully
Run the pxctl cluster delete with the --help flag to list the available subcommands and flags.
Related topics
- For more information about decommissioning a Portworx node through Kubernetes, refer to the Decommission a Node page.
Showing nodes based on IO Priority
To list the nodes in your Portworx cluster based on IO Priority (high, medium and low), type:
pxctl cluster provision-status --io_priority low
Node Node Status Pool Pool Status IO_Priority Size Available Used Provisioned ReserveFactor Zone Region
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-bc72878d4be5 Online 0 Online LOW 100 GiB 99 GiB 1.0 GiB 0 B default default
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-bc72878d4be5 Online 1 Online LOW 200 GiB 199 GiB 1.0 GiB 0 B 50 default default
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-de2699fa39b4 Online 0 Online LOW 100 GiB 92 GiB 8.2 GiB 70 GiB default default
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-4782959264bc Online 0 Online LOW 150 GiB 149 GiB 1.0 GiB 0 B default default
Run the pxctl cluster provision-status command with the --help flag to list the available subcommands and flags.
Enabling optimized restores
With Portworx Enterprise 2.1.0, users can choose to do optimized restores. The way this works is that every successful restore creates a snapshot that will be used for the next incremental restore of the same volume. Hence, for an incremental restore, only the last incremental backup will be downloaded instead of downloading all the dependent backups. Optimized restores are especially useful for workflows that involve frequent restores from a different cluster. However, this works only if dependent backups were downloaded previously.
Currently, to enable or disable optimized restores, you must use the pxctl cluster options command.
Run the pxctl cluster options command with the --help flag to list the available subcommands and flags.
Use the following command to list the options:
pxctl cluster options list
Auto decommission timeout (minutes) : 20
Replica move timeout (minutes) : 1440
Internal Snapshot Interval (minutes) : 30
Re-add timeout (minutes) : 1440
Resync repl-add : off
Domain policy : strict
Optimized Restores : off
Use the following command to enable optimized restores:
pxctl cluster options update --optimized-restores on
Successfully updated cluster wide options
Let's make sure the new settings were applied:
pxctl cluster options list
Auto decommission timeout (minutes) : 20
Replica move timeout (minutes) : 1440
Internal Snapshot Interval (minutes) : 30
Re-add timeout (minutes) : 1440
Resync repl-add : off
Domain policy : strict
Optimized Restores : on
Use a network interface for cloudsnaps
By default, cloudsnaps do not use a specific network interface to upload/download the cloudsnap data. Instead, the underlying Go libraries determine the network interface. If you need to use a specific network interface, you can set one using the --cloudsnap-nw-interface option. Setting this option directs Portworx to use the specified interface for all cloudsnap related operations.
This is a cluster-wide setting, meaning that the chosen network interface must be available on all nodes. If the chosen network interface is not available, Portworx falls-back to the "no interface chosen" default behavior.
To enable this feature, enter the following pxctl cluster options update command with the --cloudsnap-nw-interface option and specify your desired network interface and confirm at the prompt:
pxctl cluster options update --cloudsnap-nw-interface <your-network-interface>
Currently cloudsnap network interface is set to :data, changing this will affect new cloudsnaps and not the current onesDo you still want to change this now? (Y/N): y
Successfully updated cluster wide options
Configure retry limit on an error
You can configure the number of retries for an error from the object store. These retries are performed with a 10-second backoff delay, followed by progressively longer delays (incrementing by 10-second intervals) between each attempt. If the object store has multiple IP addresses as the endpoints, then for a given request, the retries are done on each of these endpoints.
Set the limit by running the pxctl cluster options update command with the --cloudsnap-err-retry-limit option, as shown in the following example:
pxctl cluster options update --cloudsnap-err-retry-limit 7
Successfully updated cluster-wide options
Verify if the limit is set.
pxctl cluster options list
Auto decommission timeout (minutes) : 20
Replica move timeout (minutes) : 1440
Internal Snapshot Interval (minutes) : 30
Re-add timeout (minutes) : 1440
Resync repl-add : off
Domain policy : strict
Optimized Restores : on
Cloudsnap Error Retry Limit : 7
Related topics
- For more information about creating and managing the snapshots of your Portworx volumes through Kubernetes, refer to the Create and use snapshots page.
pxctl cluster options update --provisioning-commit-labels reference
--provisioning-commit-labels '[{"OverCommitPercent": <percent_value>, "SnapReservePercent": <percent_value>, "LabelSelector": {"<label_key>": "<label_value>"}},{"OverCommitPercent": <percent_value>, "SnapReservePercent":<percent_value>} ]'
| Key | Description | Value |
|---|---|---|
| OverCommitPercent | The maximum storage percentage volumes can provision against backing storage | Any integer over 100 |
| SnapReservePercent | The percent of the previously specified maximum storage storage percentage that is reserved for snapshots | Any integer under 100 |
| labelSelector | The key values for labels or node IDs you wish to apply this rule to | Enumerated string: node with a comma separated list of node IDs Any existing label key and value. |
Configure cache flush operations
On systems with a large amount of memory and heavy IO activity, system memory and page cache experience a lot of activity, resulting in significant memory pressure. On these systems, the Portworx storage process may slow down or get stuck trying to allocate memory.
To prevent Portworx from slowing or getting stuck, you can preemptively drop system memory pages which are not currently in use, i.e. pages which are inactive and not dirty.
You can configure cache flush operations for all nodes on the cluster using flags with the pxctl cluster options update command.
- This command is intended for advanced users only.
- This operation drops all cached pages for all devices and may impact read performance; you should only apply the config when necessary.
- Legacy support for cache flush was enabled through an environment variable:
PX_ENABLE_CACHE_FLUSH="true". As long as the cache flush feature has not been enabled, Portworx still checks for this env var when a node starts and will enable cache flushing if it's set totrue. If you disable cache flush using thepxctlcommand, cache flush will be disabled regardless of whether the env var is set totrueor not.
Enable cache flush operations
Enter the pxctl cluster options update command with the --cache-flush flag set to enabled:
pxctl cluster options update --cache-flush enabled
Successfully updated cluster wide options
Disable cache flush operations
Enter the pxctl cluster options update command with the --cache-flush flag set to disabled:
pxctl cluster options update --cache-flush disabled
Successfully updated cluster wide options
Configure the cache flush interval
Enter the pxctl cluster options update command with the --cache-flush-seconds flag followed by your desired cache flush interval in seconds:
pxctl cluster options update --cache-flush-seconds 60
Successfully updated cluster wide options
You can specify the --cache-flush-seconds flag alongside the --cache-flush flag in a single command:
pxctl cluster options update --cache-flush enabled --cache-flush-seconds 300
Check cache flush configuration
To see if cache flush is enabled and see what the current interval is, enter the pxctl cluster options list command:
pxctl cluster options list
...
Cache flush : enabled
Cache flush interval in seconds : 30