6 min read

In this article we will cover etcd, CoreOS’s central hub of all services that provides a reliable way of storing shared data across cluster machines and monitoring it.

In this article, we will cover the following topics:

  • Introducing etcd
  • Reading and writing to etcd from the host machine
  • Reading and writing from an application container
  • Watching etcd changes
  • A TTL (time to live) example
  • use cases of etcd

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Introducing etcd

The etcd function is an open source distributed key value store on a computer network where information is stored on more than one node and data is replicated using the Raft consensus algorithm. The etcd function is used to store the CoreOS cluster service discovery and the shared configuration.

The configuration is stored in the write-ahead log and includes the cluster member ID, cluster ID and cluster configuration, and everything else that is put there container applications running in the cluster.

The etcd function runs on each cluster’s central services role machine, and gracefully handles master election during network partitions and in the event of a loss of the current master.

Reading and writing to etcd from the host machine

You are going to learn how read and write to ectd from the host machine. We will use both the etcdctl and curl examples here.

Logging in to host

To login to CoreOS VM, follow these steps:

  1. Boot your CoreOS VM installed. In your terminal, type this:
    $ cdcoreos-vagrant
    $ vagrant up
  2. We need to login to the host via ssh:
    $ vagrant ssh

Reading and writing to ectd

Let’s read and write to etcd using etcdctl. So, perform these steps:

  1. Set with etcdctl a message1 key with Book1 as the value:
    $ etcdctl set /message1 Book1
    Book1 (we got respond for our successful write to etcd
  2. Now, let’s read the key value to double-check whether everything is fine there:
    $ etcdctl get /message1
    Book1
    Perfect!
  3. Next, let’s try to do the same using curl via an HTTP-based API. The curl function is handy for accessing etcd from any place from where you have access to etcd cluster but don’t want/need to use the etcdctl client:
    $ curl -L -X PUT http://127.0.0.1:2379/v2/keys/message2 -d value="Book2"
    {"action":"set","key":"/message2","prevValue":"Book1","value":"Book2","index":13371}

    Let’s read it:

    $ curl -L http://127.0.0.1:2379/v2/keys/message2
    {"action":"get","node":{"key":"/message2","value":"Book2","modifiedIndex":13371,"createdIndex":13371}}

    Using the HTTP-based etcd API means that etcd can be read from and written to by client applications without the need to interact with the command line.

  4. Now, if we want to delete the key value pair, we type the following command:
    $ etcdctl rm /message1
    $ curl -L -X DELETE http://127.0.0.1:2379/v2/keys/message2
  5. Also, we can add a key value pair to a directory, as directories are created automatically when a key is placed inside. We need only one command to put a key inside a directory:
    $ etcdctl set /foo-directory/foo-key somekey
  6. Let’s now check the directory’s content:
    $ etcdctl ls /foo-directory –recursive
    /foo-directory/foo-key
  7. Finally, we get the key value from the directory by typing:
    $ etcdctl get /foo-directory/foo-key
    somekey

Reading and writing from the application container

Usually, application containers (this is a general term for docker, rkt, and other types of containers) do not have etcdctl or even curl installed by default. Installing curl is much easier than installing etcdctl.

For our example, we will use the AlpineLinux docker image, which is very small in size and will not take much time to pull from docker registry:

  1. Firstly, we need to check the docker0 interface IP, which we will use with curl:
    $ echo"$(ifconfig docker0 | awk'/<inet>/ { print $2}'):2379"
    10.1.42.1:2379
  2. Let’s run the docker container with a bash shell:

    $ docker run -it alpine ash

    We should see something like this in Command Prompt:/ #.

  3. As curl is not installed by default on AlpineLinux, we need to install it:
    $ apk update&&apk add curl
    $ curl -L http://10.1.42.1:2379/v2/keys/
    {"action":"get","node":{"key":"/","dir":true,"nodes":[{"key":"/coreos.com","dir":true,"modifiedIndex":3,"createdIndex":3}]}}
  4. Repeat steps 3 and 4 from the previous subtopic so that you understand that it does not matter where you are connecting to etcd from, curl still works in the same way.
  5. Press Ctrl +D to exit from the docker container.

Watching changes in etcd

This time, let’s watch the key changes in etcd. Watching key changes is useful when we have, for example, one fleet unit with nginx writing its port to etcd, and another reverse proxy application watching for changes and updating its config:

  1. We need to create a directory in etcd first:
    $ etcdctlmkdir /foo-data
  2. Next, we watch for changes in this directory:
    $ etcdctl watch /foo-data--recursive
  3. Now open another CoreOS shell in a new terminal window:
    $ cdcoreos-vagrant
    $ vagrantssh
  4. We put a new key to /foo-data directory:
    $ etcdctl set /foo-data/Book is_cool
  5. In the first terminal, we should see a notification saying that the key was changed:
    is_cool

A TTL (time to live) examples

Sometimes, it is handy to put a time to live (TTL) for a key to expire in a certain amount of time. This is useful, for example,in the case of watching a key with a 60 second TTL, from a reverse proxy. So, if the nginx fleet service has not updated the key, it will expire in 60 seconds and will be removed from etcd. Then the reverse proxy checks for it and does not find it. Hence, it will remove the nginx service from config.

Let’s set TTL for 30 seconds in this example:

  1. Type this in a terminal:
    $ etcdctl set /foo "I'm Expiring in 30 sec" --ttl 30
    I'm Expiring in 30 sec
  2. Verify that the key is still there:
    $ etcdctl get /foo
    I'm Expiring in 30 sec
  3. Check againafter 30 seconds :
    $ etcdctl get /foo
  4. If your requested key has already expired, you will be returned Error: 100:
    Error: 100: Key not found (/foo) [17053]

This time the key got deleted by etcd because we put a TTL of 30 seconds for it.

TTL is very handy to use to communicate between different services using etcd as the checking point.

Use cases of etcd

Application containers running on worker nodes with etcd in proxy mode can read and write to an etcd cluster.

Very common etcd use cases are as follows: storing database connection settings, cache settings, and shared settings. For example, the Vulcand proxy server (http://vulcanproxy.com/) uses etcd to store web host connection details, and it becomes available for all cluster-connected worker machines. Another example could be to store a database password for MySQL and retrieve it when running an application container.

Summary

To learn more about CoreOS Essentials, the following books published by Packt Publishing (https://www.packtpub.com/) are recommended:

  • Learning CoreOS (https://www.packtpub.com/networking-and-servers/learning-coreos)

Resources for Article:


Further resources on this subject:


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