Configuration

By default the Aspire distributions are configured to work in standalone mode:

  <configAdministration>
    <zookeeper enabled="false" root="/aspire">
    <!-- <externalServer>127.0.0.1:2181,127.0.0.1:2181,127.0.0.1:2181</externalServer> -->
  </configAdministration>

Let's configure our Aspire cluster, in each Aspire server modify the config/settings.xml:

1. So our first step would be to enable zookeeper and point to our zookeeper cluster. (Let's assume we have a three server zookeeper cluster zooA.dev.com, zooB.dev.com and zooC.dev.com)

     <configAdministration>
       <zookeeper enabled="true" root="/aspire">
       <externalServer>zooA.dev.com:2182,zooB.dev.com:2183,zooC.dev.com:2181</externalServer>
     </configAdministration>

2. Its recommended that you name each server with some unique id, otherwise Aspire will set its unique ID as the IP address.

   
   

     <configAdministration>
       <zookeeper enabled="true" root="/aspire">
       <externalServer>zooA.dev.com:2182,zooB.dev.com:2183,zooC.dev.com:2181</externalServer>
       <serverId>aspireA</serverId>
     </configAdministration>

3. If we were to start our Aspire servers now, they would not interact with each other as a cluster, this is because they do not share the same cluster ID. So let's define our clusterID to be "dev", by uncommenting the <clusterID> field:

     <!-- By default all Aspire servers start in their own cluster. To make servers work together, set a common
          cluster id across multiple instances that are connected to a common zooKeeper instance and database
          provider (for example "dev" or "prod") -->
     <clusterId>dev</clusterId>

Starting the cluster

1. Copy the License file into one of the Aspire servers (under config/license)

2. From that server execute

   $ bin/pushLicense.sh
   Settings File: /aspire/config/settings.xml
   License File: /aspire/config/license/AspireLicense.lic
   License copied to /aspire/dev/license/AspireLicense.lic

   This will upload the license into the ZooKeeper cluster, so all new servers connecting to it will automatically download it.

3. Execute the startup script on all servers (aspire.bat or aspire.sh)
4. Browse to http://<aspireserver>:50505/aspire  and verify the health to be "green"
   
   
   
   
5. Once all servers are up, choose any server and browse to http://<aspireserver>:50505/aspire/admin/ui/files/#/server
   1. Verify you can see all your servers
   
   
   
   
6. (Optional verification) Add an Aspider Web Crawler content source, point it to any web site you like
   
   1. Click on save
   2. Wait until the content source is loaded
   3. Verify you can see the same content source in the other servers.

From now on, any configuration done on one server will be synchronized into the others.

Advanced properties

FAQ

Just connected my distribution to ZooKeeper for the first time, and all my content sources and configuration is gone

As we mentioned above, when starting in cluster mode, Aspire pulls the configuration from ZooKeeper, this means it discards any local configuration it has. If you were using Aspire in standalone mode, then all your configuration was locally stored in the config folder of your distribution, so when you connected Aspire for the first time to ZooKeeper it discarded it all in favor of pulling the configuration from ZooKeeper (which has nothing)

But don't worry, every time Aspire starts, it creates a backup of the system configuration and stores it under config/backups: once you have started your distribution with ZooKeeper you can import the backup and restore your system configuration!

How do I upload a new license to my cluster?

If you need to upload the license again, use the -force argument like this:

$ bin/pushLicense.sh -force

Then in order to force all servers to download the new license, delete all files under config/license in all servers