Viewing clusters in the ACM

You’ll spend most of your time in the Altinity Cloud Manager working with ClickHouse® clusters. In this section we’ll look at the parts of the ACM user interface that make that easy. Along the way we’ll include links to more details about how to use each set of features.

The Clusters (plural) view

The Clusters view displays your ClickHouse clusters:

Figure 1 - The Clusters (plural) view, featuring two clusters

Key items in Figure 1 above include:

• The button, which makes it easy to create a new ClickHouse cluster. If you’d like to exit the tour and create a new cluster now, see the Launch Cluster Wizard documentation.
• The Environment menu. Clicking on the current environment name (altinity-maddie-byok) displays a list of environments you can access.
• The My Account menu. Clicking on your username (Doug Tidwell) displays a list of options for managing your account. See the My Account menu documentation for all the details of managing your account.
• The clusters in this environment. In this view there are two ClickHouse clusters, cluster2 and maddie-byok. Your clusters are displayed in panel view (shown) or the more compact list view. The panel view shows details about the cluster such as its resources and configuration, the version of ClickHouse it’s running, and whether backups are set up.

Clicking on a cluster name takes you to the Cluster view for that cluster. And speaking of the Cluster view….

Cluster tabs

The Clusters view in Figure 1 displays a tile for each cluster. The panels include indicators of the status of each cluster:

• - All nodes in the ClickHouse cluster are active. See the documentation for cluster health checks for more details.
• - TLS is enabled. - IP restrictions are enabled, so only certain IP addresses can access the cluster directly. If IP restrictions are not enabled, you’ll see the red triangle icon. Mousing over either icon displays a message:
  
  

  

  
  
  Figure 2. Status messages for IP restrictions
  
  Clicking on the message takes you to the Connection Configuration dialog, allowing you to change the setting. See the documentation for configuring cluster connections for more details.
• - All the health checks for this ClickHouse cluster passed. See the documentation for cluster health checks for more details.
• - Appears next to the version number if there is a recommended ClickHouse upgrade available. Mousing over the yellow triangle explains the situation:
  
  

  

  
  
  Figure 3 - A recommended ClickHouse upgrade is available
  
  Clicking on the message takes you to the Upgrade Cluster dialog. See the Cluster Upgrade documentation for all the details.
• - Indicates that no backups are scheduled for this environment. Mousing over the flag explains the situation:
  
  

  

  
  
  Figure 4 - No backups are configured for this environment
  
  Clicking on the message takes you to the Environment Configuration dialog. See the Configuring Backups documentation for all the details. Note: You must have administrator privileges to change an environment’s configuration.
• - Indicates that the Altinity Shield is enabled. Altinity Shield support (currently in beta) uses Altinity’s CHGuard as a sidecar proxy to protect your cluster endpoint from DDoS and password enumeration attacks. You can also bypass it temporarily, which case you’ll see the bypassed shield icon. Mousing over the flags explains the situation:
  
  

  

  
  
  Figure 5 - Altinity shield status
  
  Clicking on the icon takes you to the Configuring Connections page in the Configuring a Cluster section of the User Guide for complete details.

The Cluster (singular) view

Here’s the Cluster view for the maddie-byok cluster:

Figure 6 - The Cluster (singular) view for the maddie-byok cluster

The buttons and menus across the top of the panel are:

• ACTIONS - a menu of actions you can take on this cluster. See the Cluster Actions documentation for complete details.
• CONFIGURE - A menu of configuration options. See Configuring a Cluster for complete details.
• EXPLORE - Takes you to the Cluster Explorer, a panel that lets you work with data in the cluster, import data, view database schemas, and other useful things. See the Cluster Explorer guide for complete details.
• ALERTS - Lets you define alerts that should be triggered in response to certain events. See the Cluster alerts documentation for complete details.
• LOGS - Takes you to the Logs view, which contains a number of different logs to give you insight into your cluster. See the Cluster logs documentation for complete details.
• ALTINITY ACCESS - Lets you define the access privileges Altinity support personnel should have into your ClickHouse clusters. See the Altinity Access to ClickHouse documentation for complete details.
• - The cluster lock button, which lets you prohibit any changes to the cluster. See the Locking a cluster documentation for all the details.
• - The refresh button. Refreshes the display, as you would expect.

The rest of the view shows statistics and configuration information for the cluster. Most of that data is read-only. You can, however, change the name of the cluster owner (Doug Tidwell in Figure 1) or the Cluster Role (Development) by clicking the current value. You’ll get a simple dialog that lets you set a new value.

The Connection Details link highlighted in Figure 6 shows you the hostname, ports, and other details you’ll need to connect to your ClickHouse cluster from an application, a monitoring tool, or the clickhouse-client tool:

Figure 7 - The Connection Details for the cluster

For complete details, see the Cluster Connection Details page in the Connecting to Altinity.Cloud section.

The Nodes (plural) view

Clicking the Nodes tab highlighted below the cluster name at the top of Figure 6 above shows you the list of nodes in this cluster:

Figure 8 - The Nodes (plural) view for a cluster - panel view

This is the panel view of the nodes. If you like, you can choose the list view to see more details:

Figure 9 - The Nodes (plural) view for a cluster - list view

Clicking the button (in the panel view) or the name of the node (in the list view) takes you to the view of a single node.

The Node (singular) view

When you open the node view, you’ll be on the Overview tab:

Figure 10 - The Overview tab of the Node (singular) view

The buttons across the top of the panel are:

• - Takes you to the previous view

• RESTART - Restarts the node

• EXCLUDE FROM LB - Excludes this node from the load balancer, as you would expect. Selecting this item means that the node will not get any traffic from the load balancer. (You can still access the node directly if you have its connection information as shown in Figure 12 below.)
  
  When you click this button, you’ll be asked to confirm your decision:
  
  
  Figure 11 - Confirm removing this node from the load balancer
  
  When a node is removed from the load balancer, the text of the button becomes INCLUDE IN LB; clicking that item returns the node to the load balancer. The value of LB Status in the display is Included or Excluded as appropriate.

• EXPLORE - Takes you to the Cluster Explorer for this node. This is the same Cluster Explorer available from the Cluster view, but it is scoped to work with the current node only. See the Cluster Explorer guide for complete details.

• - The refresh button. Refreshes the display, as you would expect.

Clicking the Connection Details link highlighted in Figure 6 above shows the information you need to connect directly to this node:

Figure 12 - The Connection Details for a particular node

This dialog is similar to Figure 7 above, the difference being that the host is the URL for this node, not the entire cluster. Again, see the Cluster Connection Details page in the Connecting to Altinity.Cloud section.

The Node Metrics tab

The Metrics tab displays a long list of metrics for this node:

Figure 13 - The Metrics tab of the Node (singular) view

This is an excerpt of the display; the actual panel shows hundreds of metrics for the node.

The Node Logs tab

Finally, the Logs tab displays log messages from ClickHouse or the ClickHouse backup utility.

Figure 14 - The Logs tab of the Node (singular) view

You can enter a filter phrase to see only certain messages, and you can change how many messages are displayed at a time.