PECL memcache extension

[Mikael Johansson]

We've had thoughts about this before, specifically allowing the client to 
provide a callback that get run on successful reconnect of a failed backend.

1) At the very least the reconnected backend should be flushed to ensure it 
doesn't have any stale data laying around from before the failure.
2) If the host should fail once more, load would again be distributed around 
the cluster but now these other servers might now have stale data from 
having handled the previous failure.

If failures are infrequent (say, more than the maxium ttl of 1 day), only 1) 
would be necessary. 2) would require flushing the entire cluster on 
failback. Since the callback would be run in all the processes on all the 
frontends one would also have to take precautions not have them all execute 
the flush. For example by add()ing a "last_failback_" + 
(string)floor(time()/60) key on the failed host, if the add() succeed 
someother frontend has already performed the failback procedures.

Suggested API method
 Memcache::setReconnectedCallback(fpCallback) : bool
 function myCallback(Memcache pool, string reconnected_host, string 
reconnected_port) : void

Any thoughts?

//Mikael

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don MacAskill" <don at smugmug.com>
To: "memcached mail list" <memcached at lists.danga.com>
Cc: "Antony Dovgal" <antony at zend.com>; <mikl at php.net>
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 11:37 PM
Subject: PECL memcache extension


>
> So I was excited to see the PECL memcache extension had gotten multiple 
> server support.  But after installing it and playing with it, it doesn't 
> seem to work the way I'd hoped (and the way I currently use memcache).
>
> Maybe I'm just being dumb, and if so, I'd love to hear how I can get 
> smart.  Until my dumb-ness has been established, though, let me describe 
> how it looks like the PECL extension is working:
>
> - using 'addServer', you can add multiple servers and assign each a 
> different bucket weight (Example:  3 servers, each with 1 bucket = 3 total 
> buckets). Good.
>
> - When a server fails, that server's buckets are removed from the pool and 
> all future get/set/etc commands are reallocated to the remaining pool. 
> (Example:  ServerB fails, so the "set key1" that was going to ServerB 
> instead now goes to ServerA)
>
> And now, how my memcached setup works:
>
> - When a server fails, I mark those buckets as "offline" and no longer 
> permit get/set to that portion of the memcache cluster.  All of that data 
> must be served from it's original source (filesystem, MySQL, whatever) 
> until that server comes back up, in which case it's flushed and marked as 
> "active".  Yes, I know it's slower during a failure, but since we have 
> lots of memcache servers, it's only a % of the entire cluster slower.  And 
> failures are rare to boot.
>
> - Note that the "bucket weight" calculation still takes the "offline" 
> buckets into account, so keys are destined for dead servers rather than 
> re-allocated.
>
> And now why:
>
> If "set key1" is destined to ServerB's buckets, but ServerB fails, I don't 
> want "key1" being redirected to ServerA instead.  Why?  Because when 
> ServerB comes online, I now have "key1" in two places, and one of them 
> will now potentially get out of date.  Should ServerB fail again before 
> "key1" has expired, calls to "get key1" will return old stale data from 
> ServerA instead of fresh data or no result.
>
> Make sense?  Am I doing something wrong?  Can the PECL extension work in 
> this fashion?
>
> Don
>
>
>
>
>