How to Setup Diaspora Cluster

Diaspora is an open-source user-owned distributed social network with more than 1 million accounts all over the world. This instruction is devoted to adjusting a highly-available and failover clustering solution for your Diaspora pode, built within a bundle of two clusters (app server’s and database’s).

This is a reasonably long tutorial, but it will cover such important things as master-slave database replication and file synchronization between several application servers. These configurations will increase an application’s performance (which is especially important for such traffic demanding apps as Diaspora, with thousands and millions of users), ensure an even distribution of the load between servers and provide additional security and reliability.

So, let’s get started in order to see how simple it is, with the help of the platform’s platform.

Application Deployment

1. Log in to the platform and click the Create environment button in the upper left corner of the dashboard. diaspora Create environment

2. In the appeared Environment topology wizard navigate to the Ruby tab and choose Apache as your application server, MySQL as a database and Redis as a data structure server. Then state the required amount of resources for them using the cloudlet sliders, type your environment name (e.g. diaspora-cluster), and click the Create button. diaspora Env wizard 01

3. In a minute your environment will appear at the dashboard. diaspora Env created 01

4. Now you can start to deploy and configure your application. The full information about Diaspora deployment can be found in the platform’s Documentation. Simply follow How to install Diaspora* into PaaS instruction.

Database Configuration

Once your Diaspora application is successfully deployed and run, let’s go on to the database replication adjusting. The first thing you’ll need to do is to create a separate environment with a slave database for our DB cluster.

1. Click on the same Create environment button and choose just one MySQL instance in the opened frame. State the resource limits for your slave database, edit the name of a new environment (e.g. type diaspora-slave) and click the Create button. diaspora Env wizard

2. In a few moments your environment will be created. diaspora Env created Now let’s proceed directly to the databases configuration.

Master Database

1. Let’s start with the master database. Click the Config icon next to your MySQL node in the diaspora-cluster environment. diaspora MySQL Config

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server-id = 1  
log-bin = mysql-bin  
binlog-format=mixed

diaspora me

3. Save the changes performed and Restart your MySQL server to apply them. diaspora MySQL Restart

4. Then click Open in browser for your MySQL node and log in to the opened admin panel (with credentials you’ve received via email earlier). diaspora MySQL open in browser

5. Select Add slave replication user option in the Master replication section of the Replication tab. diaspora MySQL add slave replication

6. Specify the desired User name (e.g. slave) and Password for your slave replication user. Click the Go button. ![diaspora MySQL user](11-database-configure-replication.png

7. After that, grant replication client and replication slave privileges for the newly created user and proceed to the Go button in the bottom right corner. diaspora MySQL user privileges

Slave Database

Let’s configure the slave database now.

1. Select the Config icon next to the MySQL server of diaspora-slave environment. diaspora MySQL Config

2. Navigate to the my.cnf file inside the etc folder and edit the following parameters:
server-id = 2
slave-skip-errors = all

diaspora me 2

3. In the same way as for the master database perform the following:

Save changes to the file;
Restart your slave MySQL node;
Open it in Browser and log in using credentials the platform has sent you during the slave environment creation.

4. Select configure link in the Slave replication section of the Replication tab. diaspora MySQL slave replication configure

5. Enter User name and Password of your slave replication user. Then specify Host of your master database (its URL without http:// part) and click Go to continue. diaspora MySQL user 2

6. Now you need to enable the replication. Click on Control slave > Full start option to do that. diaspora MySQL full start

7. Finally, let’s ensure master-slave replication works for our databases. To do this, create a new database at your master DB server: go to the Databases tab, specify a new database name (e.g. iNET.elastic) and click the Create button. diaspora MySQL replication check

8. Navigate back to your slave server’s admin panel and ensure the newly created database has appeared. diaspora MySQL replication check 2

Cluster Configuration

1. Now that database replication is working, let’s proceed to your cluster configuration. You need to increase the number of application servers (scale them horizontally) for that. Click on the Change environment topology icon next to your diaspora-cluster environment. diaspora Change environment topology

2. Simply use + and - buttons in the central wizard pane in order to change the number of Apache nodes. Set this value to a minimum of 2 nodes and click the Apply button. diaspora Add node

Note: An NGINX-balancer server will be automatically added to your environment. It will be responsible for the even load distribution between the chosen amount of computing nodes.

3. Wait just a few minutes for new instances to be added. diaspora Cluster

File Synchronization

When you have the highly-available cluster configured, let’s try to upload some files to the app server without synchronization enabled.

1. Open the Diaspora application in browser first. diaspora open in browser

2. Create a new user (just follow the embedded Diaspora wizard) and post any image to your stream. You should receive something like the following: diaspora Diaspora testuser

3. Then switch back to the platform dashboard and click the Config icon for Apache Ruby servers. Navigate to the webroot/ROOT/public folder for both servers (you can switch between separate servers in cluster using the corresponding drop-down list at the tools panel) and compare their content. diaspora upload folder 1 diaspora uplaod folder 2 As you can see, the uploads folder is present at one server only.

4. Let’s configure the synchronization of files in order to fix this. Add this File Synchronization javascript to your bookmarks (simply drag it to the appropriate browser panel).

**File Synchronization**

5. While at the platform dashboard, click on our script in order to run it. diaspora Bookmarks

6. In the opened frame select the previously mentioned public folder (and any other folders you would like to synchronize) and click the Apply button. diaspora Apply file sync
Note: DO NOT select the whole webroot folder because this will disable the synchronization.

7. Ensure an uploads folder exists at all of your servers.
diaspora upload folder 3

As you can see, the uploads folder has also appeared at the second node. For now, synchronization will be automatically performed every time you add or change anything in your application.

Note: If you change the environment topology by adding more app servers, you need to initiate the script again in order to keep the synchronization process running at all nodes.

Congrats! You are finally done with Diaspora cluster configuration and you now have a powerful social network, which can support a lot of users and is protected from various issues associated with performance and reliability.