Overview

Apache Spark is a fast and general engine for large-scale data processing. Learn more at spark.apache.org.

This bundle provides a complete deployment of Spark (in standalone HA mode) and Apache Zookeeper components from Apache Bigtop. Ganglia and rsyslog applications are included to monitor cluster health and syslog activity.

Bundle Composition

The applications that comprise this bundle are spread across 6 units as follows:

• Spark (Master and Worker) v2.1.1
  • 2 separate units
• Zookeeper v3.4.6
  • 3 separate units
• Ganglia (Web interface for monitoring cluster metrics)
• Rsyslog (Aggregate cluster syslog events in a single location)
  • Colocated on the Ganglia unit

Deploying this bundle results in a fully configured Apache Bigtop Spark cluster on any supported cloud, which can be easily scaled to meet workload demands.

Deploying

This charm requires Juju 2.0 or greater. If Juju is not yet set up, please follow the getting-started instructions prior to deploying this bundle.

Note: This bundle requires hardware resources that may exceed limits of Free-tier or Trial accounts on some clouds. To deploy to these environments, modify a local copy of bundle.yaml with zookeeper: num_units: 1 and machines: 'X': constraints: mem=3G as needed to satisfy account limits.

Deploy this bundle from the Juju charm store with the juju deploy command:

juju deploy spark-processing

Alternatively, deploy a locally modified bundle.yaml with:

juju deploy /path/to/bundle.yaml

The charms in this bundle can also be built from their source layers in the Bigtop charm repository. See the Bigtop charm README for instructions on building and deploying these charms locally.

Network-Restricted Environments

Charms can be deployed in environments with limited network access. To deploy in this environment, configure a Juju model with appropriate proxy and/or mirror options. See Configuring Models for more information.

Verifying

Status

The applications that make up this bundle provide status messages to indicate when they are ready:

juju status

This is particularly useful when combined with watch to track the on-going progress of the deployment:

watch -n 2 juju status

The message for each unit will provide information about that unit's state. Once they all indicate that they are ready, perform application smoke tests to verify that the bundle is working as expected.

Smoke Test

The spark and zookeeper charms provide a smoke-test action that can be used to verify the respective application is functioning as expected. Run these actions as follows:

juju run-action spark/0 smoke-test
juju run-action zookeeper/0 smoke-test

Watch the progress of the smoke test actions with:

watch -n 2 juju show-action-status

Eventually, all of the actions should settle to status: completed. If any report status: failed, that application is not working as expected. Get more information about the smoke-test action

juju show-action-output <action-id>

Utilities

Applications in this bundle include Zookeeper command line and Spark web utilities that can be used to verify information about the cluster.

From the command line, show the list of Zookeeper nodes with the following:

juju run --unit zookeeper/0 'echo "ls /" | /usr/lib/zookeeper/bin/zkCli.sh'

To access the Spark web console, find the Public address of the spark application and expose it:

juju status spark
juju expose spark

The web interface will be available at the following URL:

http://SPARK_PUBLIC_IP:8080

Monitoring

This bundle includes Ganglia for system-level monitoring of the spark and zookeeper units. Metrics are sent to a centralized ganglia unit for easy viewing in a browser. To view the ganglia web interface, find the Public address of the Ganglia application and expose it:

juju status ganglia
juju expose ganglia

The web interface will be available at:

http://GANGLIA_PUBLIC_IP/ganglia

Logging

This bundle includes rsyslog to collect syslog data from the spark and zookeeper units. These logs are sent to a centralized rsyslog unit for easy syslog analysis. One method of viewing this log data is to simply cat syslog from the rsyslog unit:

juju run --unit rsyslog/0 'sudo cat /var/log/syslog'

Logs may also be forwarded to an external rsyslog processing service. See the Forwarding logs to a system outside of the Juju environment section of the rsyslog README for more information.

Benchmarking

The spark charm in this bundle provides benchmarks to gauge the performance of the Spark cluster. Each benchmark is an action that can be run with juju run-action:

$ juju actions spark
...
pagerank                          Calculate PageRank for a sample data set
sparkpi                           Calculate Pi
...

$ juju run-action spark/0 pagerank
Action queued with id: 339cec1f-e903-4ee7-85ca-876fb0c3d28e

$ juju show-action-output 339cec1f-e903-4ee7-85ca-876fb0c3d28e
results:
  meta:
    composite:
      direction: asc
      units: secs
      value: "83"
    start: 2017-04-12T23:22:38Z
    stop: 2017-04-12T23:24:01Z
  output: '{''status'': ''completed''}'
status: completed
timing:
  completed: 2017-04-12 23:24:02 +0000 UTC
  enqueued: 2017-04-12 23:22:36 +0000 UTC
  started: 2017-04-12 23:22:37 +0000 UTC

Scaling

By default, three spark and three zookeeper units are deployed. Scaling these applications is as simple as adding more units. To add one unit:

juju add-unit spark
juju add-unit zookeeper

Multiple units may be added at once. For example, add four more spark units:

juju add-unit -n4 spark

Issues

Apache Bigtop tracks issues using JIRA (Apache account required). File an issue for this bundle at:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/CreateIssue!default.jspa

Ensure Bigtop is selected as the project. Typically, bundle issues are filed in the deployment component with the latest stable release selected as the affected version. Any uncertain fields may be left blank.

Contact Information

• bigdata@lists.ubuntu.com

Resources

• Apache Bigtop home page
• Apache Bigtop issue tracking
• Apache Bigtop mailing lists
• Juju Big Data
• Juju Bigtop charms
• Juju mailing list