he latest release of the ObjectRocket UI now has additional enhancements to make managing the MongoDB balancer painless.
Each ObjectRocket instance automatically scales, it does so by sensing when new shards are needed and (optionally) automatically adding them using RocketScale™. ObjectRocket uses the underlaying MongoDB balancer to move chunks from shard to shard as needed.
MongoDB 2.2 introduced the concept of balancer windows. These windows are designed to instruct the Balancer when it is allowed to run. This gives end users the ability to prevent the Balancer from running during busy times and thus effecting the overall performance of the database. In my presentation from MongoNYC 2013 I detail some of these problems.
The ObjectRocket UI takes this new Balancer functionality and makes it simple to use. Customers can select to enable or disable balancer windows, and define the window via a nice UI widget. Customers can also select to turn on or off the balancer entirely, and see an indicator if the balancer is running.
A back end daemon comes along and picks up these preferences and applies them to the cluster. If the Balancer is running while the user changes the value, the Balancer will pick the preference up the next run cycle. Each instance has by default the Balancer enabled and no window defined.
Users now can easily:
- Define a balancer window
- Set the preference (on/off) of the Balancer
- See the current settings of the Balancer
This is the first in a series of simple enhancements designed to make any ObjectRocket instance very simple and straightforward to use. In future releases we are adding notification functionality to system, and specific checks for the balancer.
You can take a peek at the new enhancements at https://app.objectrocket.com