Cluster types

Amazon FinSpace supports a variety of kdb clusters that you can use for different uses cases such as to implement a standard kdb tick architecture.

General purpose

You can use a general purpose cluster if your kdb application doesn't require any specific features that are available on more specialized clusters—like the multi-node, Multi-AZ read-only query of an HDB cluster or the multi-node, Multi-AZ gateways.

With a general purpose cluster, you can mount a kdb Insights database for read-only access, as well as storage (savedown storage) for writing. This ability to read a database and write contents from a single cluster makes general purpose clusters suitable for various maintenance tasks. For example, you can use a general purpose cluster for tasks that require the ability to read and write data, and for creating derived datasets from an HDB cluster, in support of use cases such as one-time analysis by quantitative analysts (quants).

Features of a general purpose cluster

The following are the features of a general purpose cluster.

• The node count for this cluster type is fixed at 1.

• It only supports Single-AZ mode.

• It can mount a kdb Insights database for read-only access to data.

• You can configure savedown storage at the time of creating the cluster. You can use this space for writing savedown files before loading into a FinSpace database, or as a writeable space of other temporary files. For dedicated clusters, the savedown storage becomes unavailable when the cluster node is deleted.

• For clusters running on a scaling group, the savedown storage location will use a shared volume. This volume exists even after you delete the cluster and can be used by other clusters. You can remove the data on the volume before deleting the cluster or it remains available for use by other clusters.

• It can update databases and cache with the UpdateKxClusterDatabase operation.

Tickerplant

A tickerplant (TP) acts as a message bus that subscribes to data or gets data pushed to it by Feed Handlers and then publishes it to one or more consumers, typically a realtime database (RDB). It persists a copy of each message received to a durable log of messages that are called the TP Log, so that downstream subscribers can request a replay of messages if needed. The following diagram explains that you can configure a TP cluster to save logs to a volume in Managed kdb Insights, from where you can replay the logs from an RDB type cluster.

Features of a tickerplant cluster

Following are the features of a tickerplant type cluster:


• It supports only single-node that is only one kdb process.

• It shares storage with RDB clusters.

• It does not support the Multi-AZ mode. If you need Multi-AZ redundancy, run two TP type clusters in parallel.

Gateway

In the vast majority of kdb+ systems, data is stored across several processes, which results in the need to access data across these processes. You do this by using a gateway to act as a single interface point that separates the end user from the configuration of underlying databases or services. With a gateway, you don't need to know where data is stored, and you don't need to make multiple requests to retrieve it.

To support running your custom gateway logic, Managed kdb Insights provides a gateway cluster type. You can deploy your own routing logic using the initialization scripts and custom code. You can configure gateways to a multi-node, Multi-AZ deployment for resiliency.

Features of a gateway cluster

The following are the features of a gateway type cluster:


• It provides support to run gateways with your custom allocation hosted inside of a Managed kdb environment.

• It provides support for hosting code with custom allocation logic for allocating load across different kdb clusters or nodes.

• It integrates with the discovery service to understand available clusters, monitor their health status, and provide an endpoint for the cluster.

• It provides a network path from your custom code running on the gateway to the cluster supporting IPC connections.

Real-time database (RDB)

You can use a real-time database cluster to capture all the data from another kdb process, such as a ticker plant, and store it in memory for query or real-time processing. Because the data volume can eventually exceed the amount of available memory, kdb customers typically move the data from the RDB to a historical database (HDB) using a process called savedown. This process typically occurs at the end of a business day.

You can create, list, and delete RDB clusters with single or multiple nodes through both console and FinSpace API operations.

Savedown storage

RDB clusters require local space for temporary storage of data during the savedown process. This temporary storage is used to hold data for the period between when a cluster has flushed it from memory and when it is successfully loaded into a kdb Insights database. To support this, RDB clusters have writeable disk that is used as storage space for savedown data. You can use the data saved down to the FinSpace database from and RDB by creating an HDB cluster that points to the database.

Considerations

The following are some considerations related to savedown storage:

• You can configure savedown storage at the time of creating the cluster. You can use this space to write savedown files before loading into a FinSpace database, or as a writeable space for other temporary files.

• For dedicated clusters, the savedown storage becomes unavailable when you delete a cluster node.

• For clusters running on a scaling group, the savedown storage location will use a shared volume. This volume exists even after you delete the cluster and can be used by other clusters. You can remove the data on the volume before deleting the cluster or it remains available for use by other clusters.

Historical database (HDB)

A historical database holds data from a day before the current day. Each day, new records are added to the HDB at the end of day. To access data in Managed kdb databases from an HDB cluster, you must attach the databases you want to access as an option when launching the cluster. You can do this at the time of creating a cluster through the console, or by using the create cluster API operation in the Amazon FinSpace Management API Reference. The HDB cluster can access this data in a read-only mode.

Cache configuration

When you attach a database to a cluster for access, by default, the read operations are performed directly against the object store that the database data is stored in. Alternatively, you can also define a file cache, in which you can load data for faster performance. You do this by specifying cache configuration when you associate the database with the cluster. You can specify a certain amount of cache, and then separately specify the contents of the database that you want to cache.

FinSpace supports the following cache types:

• CACHE_1000 – This type allows a throughput of 1000 MB/s per unit storage (TiB).

• CACHE_250 – This type allows a throughput of 250 MB/s per unit storage (TiB).

• CACHE_12 – This type allows a throughput of 12 MB/s per unit storage (TiB).

Considerations

The following are some considerations related to storage and billing:

• Caching is only available on dedicated clusters. For clusters running on a scaling group, use dataviews.

• You can only configure initial cache size at the time of cluster creation. To run a cluster with a different sized cache, you need to terminate the cluster and launch a new one with smaller database cache size.

• Billing for cache storage starts when storage is available for use by the cluster and stops when the cluster is terminated.

Auto scaling

With the HDB auto scaling feature, you can take away some nodes to save costs when the usage is low, and add more nodes to improve availability and performance when the usage is high. For auto scaling HDB clusters, you specify the CPU utilization targets for your scaling policy. You can auto scale an HDB cluster at the time of cluster creation in two ways. You can use the console or use the createKxCluster API operation, where you provide minimum and maximum node count, the metric policy, and a target utilization percentage. As a result, FinSpace scales in or scales out the clusters based on service utilization that's determined by CPU consumed by the kdb+ node.

Note

Auto scaling is only available for dedicated clusters and is not supported for clusters running on scaling groups.

Summary of capabilities by cluster type

Capability	General purpose	Gateway	RDB	TP	HDB
Attaches a Managed kdb Insights database for read-only access	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
Attaches writable local (savedown) storage to a node	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Number of nodes supported	Single	Multi	Multi	Single	Multi
Supports AZ configurations (for dedicated clusters)	Single	Single or Multi	Single or Multi	Single	Single or Multi