Replica Autosetup for HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Database Tables

The option to automatically set up table replication, also known as replica autosetup, performs the steps to set up and start the replication of HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Database binary table and HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Database JSON tables. The replica autosetup option is available through the Control System and maprcli commands.

In general, replica autosetup performs the following steps to set up replication:

Creates a new table with metadata from the source table in the destination cluster. The primary table attributes are copied initially if an auto setup is used, because auto setup creates the destination table and any subsequent changes to the primary table's metadata are not propagated to the destination table. In the manual table replication setup, no metadata is propagated, even during the setup.
Declares the new table to be a replica of the source table and sets a paused replication state to ensure that replication does not begin immediately after the next step.
Declares the source table as an upstream source for the replica.
Loads a copy of the source data into the replica.
For multi-master replication, replica autosetup declares the source table to be a replica of the new table and then declares the new table to be an upstream source for the source table.
Clears the paused replication state to start the replication stream.

By default, replica autosetup uses the directcopy option. However, based on how you run replica autosetup, you also have the choice not to use directcopy.

Replica Autosetup with Directcopy (default)

The directcopy option uses gateways to perform all setup operations including the initial population of data into the replica table. Directcopy is the default option when you setup table replication using the Control System or with the maprcli table replica autosetup command.

When a client submits a request to automatically setup table replication to the cluster, the source cluster acknowledges the request and begins to track the replica autosetup request from start to finish.

If a failure occurs when replica autosetup operations are in progress, the source cluster resumes operations from the point of failure.

Note: To check the replication status of a table, run the

maprcli table replica
            list

command. To stop the automatic setup of table replication, run

maprcli table replica
          remove

, or delete the source or replica table.

Replica autosetup with directcopy provides the following benefits:

Replica autosetup operations do not block the client from submitting additional requests. When setting up table replication, the process to copy source data to the replica can be time consuming. The client does not need to wait for the replica autosetup request to complete before submitting another request.
Source cluster retries replica autosetup operations in case of failure. The source cluster keeps track of the replica autosetup progress. This allows the source cluster to resume autosetup operations in the event of an intermittent failure. If you choose to not use directcopy, user intervention is required if a failure occurs.
Throttling of copy table operations is done by default. Throttling prevents the initial copy of data from the source to the replica table from consuming all cluster resources.

Replica Autosetup without Directcopy (not default)

Without the directcopy option, replica autosetup submits a majority of the replication setup requests through the client and then runs a copy table utility to populate the initial table data. To use replica autosetup without the directcopy option, run maprcli table replica autosetup command with the -directcopy parameter set to false.

Without the directcopy option, once a client submits a replica autosetup request to the cluster, it must wait until the source cluster sends a notification that the autosetup request is complete before it can submit another request to the cluster. In this case, replica autosetup uses the client connection to submit autosetup operation requests such as create replica, add replica, and add upstream source. To populate the initial table data, the client runs mapr copytable for JSON tables and the CopyTable utility for binary tables.

If a failure occurs when replica autosetup operations are in progress, the client hangs and any replica tables that were created during the failed autosetup operations must be manually deleted before trying to setup replication again.