Heya Geoff,

a CouchDB cluster is designed to run in the same data center / with local are 
networking latencies. A cluster across AWS Availability Zones won’t work as you 
see. If you want CouchDB’s in both AZs, use regular replication and keep the 
clusters local to the AZ.

Best
Jan
--

> On 4. Dec 2017, at 19:46, Geoffrey Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've spent days using trial and error to try and figure out why I am
> getting a very high CPU load on only a single node in my cluster. I'm
> hoping someone has an idea of what is going on as I'm getting stuck.
> 
> Here's my configuration:
> 
>   1. 2 node cluster:
>      1. Each node is located in a different AWS availability zone
>      2. Each node is a t2 medium instance (2 CPU cores, 4 GB Mem)
>   2. A haproxy server is load balancing traffic to the nodes using round
>   robin
> 
> The problem:
> 
>   1. After users make changes via PouchDB, a backend runs a number of
>   routines that use views to calculate notifications. The issue is that on a
>   single node, the couchjs processes stack up and then start to consume
>   nearly all the available CPU. This server then becomes the "workhorse" that
>   always does *all* the heavy duty couchjs processing until I restart this
>   node.
>   2. It is important to note that both nodes have couchjs processes, but
>   it is only a single node that has the couchjs processes that are using 100%
>   CPU
>   3. I've even resorted to setting `os_process_limit = 10` and this just
>   results in each couchjs process taking over 10% each! In other words, the
>   couchjs processes just eat up all the CPU no matter how many couchjs
>   process there are!
>   4. The CPU usage will eventually clear after all the processing is done,
>   but then as soon as there is more to process the workhorse node will get
>   bogged down again.
>   5. If I restart the workhorse node, the other node then becomes the
>   workhorse node. This is the only way to get the couchjs processes to "move"
>   to another node.
>   6. The problem is that this design is not scalable as only one node can
>   be the workhorse node at any given time. Moreover this causes specific
>   instances to run out of CPU credits. Shouldn't the couchjs processes be
>   spread out over all my nodes? From what I can tell, if I add more nodes I'm
>   still going to have the issue where only one of the nodes is getting bogged
>   down. Is it possible that the problem is that I have 2 nodes and really I
>   need at least 3 nodes? (I know a 2-node cluster is not very typical)
> 
> 
> Things I've checked:
> 
>   1. Ensured that the load balancing is working, i.e. haproxy is indeed
>   distributing traffic accordingly
>   2. I've tried setting `os_process_limit = 10` and `os_process_soft_limit
>   = 5` to see if I could force a more conservative usage of couchjs
>   processes, but instead the couchjs processes just consume all the CPU load.
>   3. I've tried simulating the issue locally with VMs and I cannot
>   duplicate any such load. My guess is that this is because the nodes are
>   located on the same box so hop distance between nodes is very small and
>   this somehow keeps the CPU usage to a minimum
>   4. I've tried isolating the issue by creating short code snippets that
>   intentionally try to spawn a lot of couchjs processes and they are spawned
>   but don't consume 100% CPU
>   5. I've tried rolling back from CouchDB 2.1.1 to CouchDB 2.0 and this
>   doesn't seem to change anything
>   6. The only error entries in my CouchDB logs are like the following and
>   I don't believe they are related to my issue:
>      1.
> 
>      [error] 2017-12-04T18:13:38.728970Z [email protected] <0.13974.79>
>      4b0b21c664 rexi_server: from: [email protected](<0.20638.79>) mfa:
>      fabric_rpc:open_shard/2 throw:{forbidden,<<"You are not allowed to access
>      this db.">>}
>      
> [{couch_db,open,2,[{file,"src/couch_db.erl"},{line,185}]},{fabric_rpc,open_shard,2,[{file,"src/fabric_rpc.erl"},{line,267}]},{rexi_server,init_p,3,[{file,"src/rexi_server.erl"},{line,139}]}]
> 
> Does CouchDB have some logic built in that spawns a number of couchjs
> processes on a "primary" node? Will future view processing then always be
> routed to this "primary" node?
> 
> Is there a way to better distribute these heavy duty couchjs processes? Is
> it possible to limit their CPU consumption? (I'm hesitant to start down the
> path of using something like cpulimit as I think there is a root problem
> that needs to be addressed)
> 
> I'm running out of ideas and hope that someone has some notion of what is
> causing this bizarre load or if there is a bug in CouchDB.
> 
> Thank you for any help you can provide!
> 
> Geoff

-- 
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