Deploy a cluster on bare metal

tip
  1. You can use single-cluster Pulsar installation in most use cases, such as experimenting with Pulsar or using Pulsar in a startup or in a single team. If you need to run a multi-cluster Pulsar instance, see the .
  2. If you want to use all built-in Pulsar IO connectors, you need to download package and install apache-pulsar-io-connectors under connectors directory in the pulsar directory on every broker node or on every function-worker node if you have run a separate cluster of function workers for .
  3. If you want to use Tiered Storage feature in your Pulsar deployment, you need to download apache-pulsar-offloaderspackage and install apache-pulsar-offloaders under offloaders directory in the Pulsar directory on every broker node. For more details of how to configure this feature, you can refer to the .
  1. Deploy a ZooKeeper cluster (optional)
  2. Initialize
  3. Deploy a BookKeeper cluster
  4. Deploy one or more Pulsar

Currently, Pulsar is available for 64-bit macOS, Linux, and Windows. To use Pulsar, you need to install 64-bit JRE/JDK 8 or later versions, JRE/JDK 11 is recommended.

tip

You can reuse existing Zookeeper clusters.

To run Pulsar on bare metal, the following configuration is recommended:

  • At least 6 Linux machines or VMs
    • 3 for running
    • 3 for running a Pulsar broker, and a BookKeeper bookie
  • A single name covering all of the Pulsar broker hosts
note
  • Broker is only supported on 64-bit JVM.
  • If you do not have enough machines, or you want to test Pulsar in cluster mode (and expand the cluster later), You can fully deploy Pulsar on a node on which ZooKeeper, bookie and broker run.
  • If you do not have a DNS server, you can use the multi-host format in the service URL instead.

Each machine in your cluster needs to have or Java 11 installed.

The following is a diagram showing the basic setup:

In this diagram, connecting clients need to communicate with the Pulsar cluster using a single URL. In this case, pulsar-cluster.acme.com abstracts over all of the message-handling brokers. Pulsar message brokers run on machines alongside BookKeeper bookies; brokers and bookies, in turn, rely on ZooKeeper.

If you deploy a Pulsar cluster, keep in mind the following basic better choices when you do the capacity planning.

ZooKeeper

For machines running ZooKeeper, it is recommended to use less powerful machines or VMs. Pulsar uses ZooKeeper only for periodic coordination-related and configuration-related tasks, not for basic operations. If you run Pulsar on Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, a instance might likely suffice.

Bookies and Brokers

For machines running a bookie and a Pulsar broker, more powerful machines are required. For an AWS deployment, for example, instances may be appropriate. On those machines you can use the following:

  • Fast CPUs and 10Gbps NIC (for Pulsar brokers)
  • Small and fast (SSDs) or hard disk drives (HDDs) with a controller and a battery-backed write cache (for BookKeeper bookies)

Hardware recommendations

To start a Pulsar instance, below are the minimum and the recommended hardware settings.

A cluster consists of 3 broker nodes, 3 bookie nodes, and 3 ZooKeeper nodes. The following recommendation is suitable for one node.

  • The minimum hardware settings (250 Pulsar topics)

  • The recommended hardware settings (1000 Pulsar topics)

Install the Pulsar binary package

To get started deploying a Pulsar cluster on bare metal, you need to download a binary tarball release in one of the following ways:

Once you download the tarball, untar it and cd into the resulting directory:

  2. $ tar xvzf apache-pulsar-2.10.0-bin.tar.gz
  3. $ cd apache-pulsar-2.10.0

The extracted directory contains the following subdirectories:

Since Pulsar release 2.1.0-incubating, Pulsar provides a separate binary distribution, containing all the builtin connectors. To enable the builtin connectors (optional), you can follow the instructions below.

To use builtin connectors, you need to download the connectors tarball release on every broker node in one of the following ways :

  • by clicking the link below and downloading the release from an Apache mirror:

  • from the Pulsar

  • from the Pulsar releases page

  • using :

    2. $ wget https://archive.apache.org/dist/pulsar/pulsar-2.10.0/connectors/{connector}-2.10.0.nar

Once you download the .nar file, copy the file to directory connectors in the pulsar directory. For example, if you download the connector file pulsar-io-aerospike-2.10.0.nar:

  2. $ mkdir connectors
  3. $ mv pulsar-io-aerospike-2.10.0.nar connectors
  4. $ ls connectors
  5. pulsar-io-aerospike-2.10.0.nar
  6. ...

Since Pulsar release 2.2.0, Pulsar releases a separate binary distribution, containing the tiered storage offloaders. If you want to enable tiered storage feature, you can follow the instructions as below; otherwise you can skip this section for now.

To use tiered storage offloaders, you need to download the offloaders tarball release on every broker node in one of the following ways:

Once you download the tarball, in the Pulsar directory, untar the offloaders package and copy the offloaders as offloaders in the Pulsar directory:

  2. $ tar xvfz apache-pulsar-offloaders-2.10.0-bin.tar.gz
  4. // you can find a directory named `apache-pulsar-offloaders-2.10.0` in the pulsar directory
  5. // then copy the offloaders
  7. $ mv apache-pulsar-offloaders-2.10.0/offloaders offloaders
  9. $ ls offloaders
  10. tiered-storage-jcloud-2.10.0.nar

For more details of how to configure tiered storage feature, you can refer to the Tiered storage cookbook

Deploy a ZooKeeper cluster

If you already have an existing zookeeper cluster and want to use it, you can skip this section.

ZooKeeper manages a variety of essential coordination-related and configuration-related tasks for Pulsar. To deploy a Pulsar cluster, you need to deploy ZooKeeper first. A 3-node ZooKeeper cluster is the recommended configuration. Pulsar does not make heavy use of ZooKeeper, so the lightweight machines or VMs should suffice for running ZooKeeper.

To begin, add all ZooKeeper servers to the configuration specified in (in the Pulsar directory that you create above). The following is an example:

  2. server.1=zk1.us-west.example.com:2888:3888
  3. server.2=zk2.us-west.example.com:2888:3888
  4. server.3=zk3.us-west.example.com:2888:3888

Example of configuration on server.3

  2. server.1=zk1.us-west.example.com:2888:3888
  3. server.2=zk2.us-west.example.com:2888:3888
  4. server.3=0.0.0.0:2888:3888

On each host, you need to specify the ID of the node in the myid file, which is in the data/zookeeper folder of each server by default (you can change the file location via the parameter).

See the Multi-server setup guide in the ZooKeeper documentation for detailed information on myid and more.

For example, on a ZooKeeper server like zk1.us-west.example.com, you can set the myid value as follows:

  2. $ mkdir -p data/zookeeper

On zk2.us-west.example.com, the command is echo 2 > data/zookeeper/myid and so on.

Once you add each server to the zookeeper.conf configuration and have the appropriate myid entry, you can start ZooKeeper on all hosts (in the background, using nohup) with the CLI tool:

  2. $ bin/pulsar-daemon start zookeeper

If you plan to deploy Zookeeper with the Bookie on the same node, you need to start zookeeper by using different stats port by configuring the metricsProvider.httpPort in zookeeper.conf.

Initialize cluster metadata

Once you deploy ZooKeeper for your cluster, you need to write some metadata to ZooKeeper. You only need to write this data once.

You can initialize this metadata using the command of the pulsar CLI tool. This command can be run on any machine in your Pulsar cluster, so the metadata can be initialized from a ZooKeeper, broker, or bookie machine. The following is an example:

  2. $ bin/pulsar initialize-cluster-metadata \
  3.   --cluster pulsar-cluster-1 \
  4.   --metadata-store zk:zk1.us-west.example.com:2181,zk2.us-west.example.com:2181/my-chroot-path \
  5.   --configuration-metadata-store zk:zk1.us-west.example.com:2181,zk2.us-west.example.com:2181/my-chroot-path \
  6.   --web-service-url http://pulsar.us-west.example.com:8080 \
  7.   --web-service-url-tls https://pulsar.us-west.example.com:8443 \
  8.   --broker-service-url pulsar://pulsar.us-west.example.com:6650 \
  9.   --broker-service-url-tls pulsar+ssl://pulsar.us-west.example.com:6651

As you can see from the example above, you will need to specify the following:

If you do not have a DNS server, you can use multi-host format in the service URL with the following settings:

If you want to use an existing BookKeeper cluster, you can add the --existing-bk-metadata-service-uri flag as follows:

  2. --existing-bk-metadata-service-uri "zk+null://zk1:2181;zk2:2181/ledgers" \
  3. --web-service-url http://host1:8080,host2:8080,host3:8080 \
  4. --web-service-url-tls https://host1:8443,host2:8443,host3:8443 \
  5. --broker-service-url pulsar://host1:6650,host2:6650,host3:6650 \
  6. --broker-service-url-tls pulsar+ssl://host1:6651,host2:6651,host3:6651

You can obtain the metadata service URI of the existing BookKeeper cluster by using the bin/bookkeeper shell whatisinstanceid command. You must enclose the value in double quotes since the multiple metadata service URIs are separated with semicolons.

handles all persistent data storage in Pulsar. You need to deploy a cluster of BookKeeper bookies to use Pulsar. You can choose to run a 3-bookie BookKeeper cluster.

You can configure BookKeeper bookies using the conf/bookkeeper.conf configuration file. The most important step in configuring bookies for our purposes here is ensuring that is set to the connection string for the ZooKeeper cluster. The following is an example:

  2. zkServers=zk1.us-west.example.com:2181,zk2.us-west.example.com:2181,zk3.us-west.example.com:2181

Once you appropriately modify the zkServers parameter, you can make any other configuration changes that you require. You can find a full listing of the available BookKeeper configuration parameters here. However, consulting the for a more in-depth guide might be a better choice.

Once you apply the desired configuration in conf/bookkeeper.conf, you can start up a bookie on each of your BookKeeper hosts. You can start up each bookie either in the background, using nohup, or in the foreground.

  2. $ bin/pulsar-daemon start bookie

To start the bookie in the foreground:

  2. $ bin/pulsar bookie

You can verify that a bookie works properly by running the bookiesanity command on the :

  2. $ bin/bookkeeper shell bookiesanity

This command creates an ephemeral BookKeeper ledger on the local bookie, writes a few entries, reads them back, and finally deletes the ledger.

After you start all the bookies, you can use simpletest command for BookKeeper shell on any bookie node, to verify all the bookies in the cluster are up running.

This command creates a num-bookies sized ledger on the cluster, writes a few entries, and finally deletes the ledger.

Deploy Pulsar brokers

Pulsar brokers are the last thing you need to deploy in your Pulsar cluster. Brokers handle Pulsar messages and provide the administrative interface of Pulsar. A good choice is to run 3 brokers, one for each machine that already runs a BookKeeper bookie.

The most important element of broker configuration is ensuring that each broker is aware of the ZooKeeper cluster that you have deployed. Ensure that the metadataStoreUrl and parameters are correct. In this case, since you only have 1 cluster and no configuration store setup, the configurationMetadataStoreUrl point to the same metadataStoreUrl.

  2. metadataStoreUrl=zk1.us-west.example.com:2181,zk2.us-west.example.com:2181,zk3.us-west.example.com:2181
  3. configurationMetadataStoreUrl=zk1.us-west.example.com:2181,zk2.us-west.example.com:2181,zk3.us-west.example.com:2181

You also need to specify the cluster name (matching the name that you provided when you initialize the metadata of the cluster):

  2. clusterName=pulsar-cluster-1

In addition, you need to match the broker and web service ports provided when you initialize the metadata of the cluster (especially when you use a different port than the default):

  2. brokerServicePort=6650
  3. brokerServicePortTls=6651
  4. webServicePort=8080

If you want to enable , you can follow the instructions as below:

  1. Edit conf/broker.conf to enable functions worker, by setting functionsWorkerEnabled to true.

  1. Edit conf/functions_worker.yml and set pulsarFunctionsCluster to the cluster name that you provide when you initialize the metadata of the cluster.

    2. pulsarFunctionsCluster: pulsar-cluster-1

If you want to learn more options about deploying the functions worker, check out .

You can then provide any other configuration changes that you want in the conf/broker.conf file. Once you decide on a configuration, you can start up the brokers for your Pulsar cluster. Like ZooKeeper and BookKeeper, you can start brokers either in the foreground or in the background, using nohup.

You can start a broker in the foreground using the command:

  2. $ bin/pulsar broker

You can start a broker in the background using the pulsar-daemon CLI tool:

  2. $ bin/pulsar-daemon start broker

Once you successfully start up all the brokers that you intend to use, your Pulsar cluster should be ready to go!

Connect to the running cluster

Once your Pulsar cluster is up and running, you should be able to connect with it using Pulsar clients. One such client is the pulsar-client tool, which is included with the Pulsar binary package. The pulsar-client tool can publish messages to and consume messages from Pulsar topics and thus provide a simple way to make sure that your cluster runs properly.

To use the pulsar-client tool, first modify the client configuration file in in your binary package. You need to change the values for webServiceUrl and brokerServiceUrl, substituting localhost (which is the default), with the DNS name that you assign to your broker/bookie hosts. The following is an example:

  2. webServiceUrl=http://us-west.example.com:8080
  3. brokerServiceurl=pulsar://us-west.example.com:6650

If you do not have a DNS server, you can specify multi-host in service URL as follows:

  2. webServiceUrl=http://host1:8080,host2:8080,host3:8080
  3. brokerServiceurl=pulsar://host1:6650,host2:6650,host3:6650

Once that is complete, you can publish a message to the Pulsar topic:

  2. $ bin/pulsar-client produce \
  3.   persistent://public/default/test \
  4.   -n 1 \
  5.   -m "Hello Pulsar"

You may need to use a different cluster name in the topic if you specify a cluster name other than pulsar-cluster-1.

This command publishes a single message to the Pulsar topic. In addition, you can subscribe to the Pulsar topic in a different terminal before publishing messages as below:

  2. $ bin/pulsar-client consume \
  3.   persistent://public/default/test \
  4.   -n 100 \
  5.   -s "consumer-test" \
  6.   -t "Exclusive"

Once you successfully publish the above message to the topic, you should see it in the standard output:

  2. ----- got message -----
  3. Hello Pulsar

If you have enabled Pulsar Functions, you can try out the Pulsar Functions now.

Create an ExclamationFunction exclamation.

  2. bin/pulsar-admin functions create \
  3.   --jar examples/api-examples.jar \
  4.   --classname org.apache.pulsar.functions.api.examples.ExclamationFunction \
  5.   --inputs persistent://public/default/exclamation-input \
  6.   --output persistent://public/default/exclamation-output \
  7.   --tenant public \
  8.   --namespace default \
  9.   --name exclamation

You should see the following output: