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Cluster Configuration#

Starting from version 3.1.0, TheHive can scale horizontally very easily. You can dynamically add nodes to your cluster to increase the performance of the platform. TheHive API is stateless to the exclusion of the stream (or real-time flow). For this reason, the cluster nodes need to communicate with each other.

The first node of the cluster has a specific role: it must initiate the cluster creation. Any additional node only needs to contact at least one node of the cluster to join it. This is done by configuring so-called seed nodes.

The first node must have itself in the seed node list. The other nodes must have at least one entry corresponding to a node that has already joined the seed node list.

Note : all cluster nodes must share the same secret (play.http.secret.key in application.conf).

Configuration#

Define node1 (for example with IP address 10.0.0.1) as the first node of the cluster. The configuration section in application.conf should look like the following:

akka {
  remote {
    netty.tcp {
      hostname = "10.0.0.1"
      port = 2552
    }
  }
  # seed node is itself as it is the first node of the cluster
  cluster.seed-nodes = ["akka.tcp://[email protected]:2552"]
}

Then add another node. Let's call it node2 and assume its IP address is 10.0.0.2 to our one-node cluster. You can see that it is referring to the first node in cluster.seed-nodes:

akka {
  remote {
    netty.tcp {
      hostname = "10.0.0.2"
      port = 2552
    }
  }
  # seed node list contains at least one active node
  cluster.seed-nodes = ["akka.tcp://[email protected]:2552"]
}

We recommend defining several seed nodes in the respective configuration files, except for the first one. For example:

node configured seed nodes
node1 node1
node2 node1, node3
node3 node2, node4
node4 node1, node2, node3

Load Balancing#

In front of TheHive cluster, you can add a load balancer which distributes HTTP requests to cluster nodes. One client does not need to always use the same node as affinity is not required.

Below is an non-optimized example of a haproxy configuration:

# Global standard configuration, nothing specific for TheHive
global
        log /dev/log    local0
        log /dev/log    local1 notice
        chroot /var/lib/haproxy
        stats socket /run/haproxy/admin.sock mode 660 level admin
        stats timeout 30s
        user haproxy
        group haproxy
        daemon

        ca-base /etc/ssl/certs
        crt-base /etc/ssl/private

        ssl-default-bind-ciphers ECDH+AESGCM:DH+AESGCM:ECDH+AES256:DH+AES256:ECDH+AES128:DH+AES:RSA+AESGCM:RSA+AES:!aNULL:!MD5:!DSS
        ssl-default-bind-options no-sslv3

defaults
        log     global
        mode    http
        option  httplog
        option  dontlognull
        timeout connect 500
        timeout client  50000
        # server timeout must be at least the stream.refresh parameter in application.conf
        timeout server  2m
        errorfile 400 /etc/haproxy/errors/400.http
        errorfile 403 /etc/haproxy/errors/403.http
        errorfile 408 /etc/haproxy/errors/408.http
        errorfile 500 /etc/haproxy/errors/500.http
        errorfile 502 /etc/haproxy/errors/502.http
        errorfile 503 /etc/haproxy/errors/503.http
        errorfile 504 /etc/haproxy/errors/504.http


# Listen on all interfaces, on port 9000/tcp
frontend http-in
        bind *:9000
        default_backend servers

    # Configure all cluster node
    backend servers
        balance roundrobin
        server node1 10.0.0.1:9000 check
        server node2 10.0.0.2:9000 check
        server node3 10.0.0.3:9000 check
        server node4 10.0.0.4:9000 check

Troubleshooting#

Should you encounter troubles with your setup, you can enable debug messages with the following configuration:

akka {
  actor {
    debug {
      receive = on
      autoreceive = on
      lifecycle = on
      unhandled = on
    }
  }
}

Additional Information#

TheHive Leverages Akka Cluster. You can refer to the Akka documentation for additional information.


Last update: March 2, 2021 11:39:03