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Connecting a GridGain Cluster

This page explains how to connect a GridGain cluster to Control Center. You can connect as many clusters as your license supports. Control Center allows you to switch between clusters at will.

A standard procedure for connecting a GridGain cluster to Control Center involves the following steps:

  1. Configure your cluster:

    1. Enable the Control Center Agent module;

    2. Enable metrics;

    3. Optionally, enable tracing;

    4. Optionally, enable snapshots;

    5. Optionally, assign a user-friendly name to the cluster;

    6. In case of a custom installation of Control Center, set the URI of Control Center in your cluster.

  2. Register the cluster in Control Center

The following diagram illustrates how Control Center interacts with the cluster and the web browser.

Connect GridGain Cluster to Control Center

Configuring Your Cluster

Enabling the Control Center Module

The connection between the cluster and Control Center is initiated from the cluster side.

For this to happen, you need to enable the control-center-agent module in the cluster. The module must be enabled on all server nodes. If you plan to connect client nodes to your cluster, enable the module on the client nodes as well. Otherwise, you will get the following exception on the client node:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.gridgain.control.agent.configuration.ControlCenterAgentConfiguration

Depending on how you deploy your cluster, you can enable the module in different ways:

  • If you start nodes from the distribution package by executing ignite.sh, copy the {GRIDGAIN_HOME}/libs/optional/control-center-agent folder to {GRIDGAIN_HOME}/libs/.

  • If you start nodes using Maven, see this section for the information on how to enable modules.

  • If you use a GridGain Docker image, see Enabling Modules.

When you start your cluster with the Control Center Agent enabled, you can use the management.sh script to enable and disable management functions for the cluster. The management script is located in the bin directory of the distribution package. Detailed descriptions are available in the Command Line Options page.

As the cluster tries to connect to Control Center, you should see the following messages in the console output of the coordinator node (the oldest node in the cluster):

node output

You can copy the link and open it in your browser, or you can copy the token and add the cluster in Control Center.

Enabling Metrics

Control Center collects metrics from the cluster nodes that are running. Most metrics are available by default, but some metrics must be enabled in the cluster before you can view them in Control Center.

You can enable metrics in two ways:

  • In the cluster configuration, or

  • Via JMX Beans at runtime

Refer to this page for details.

Enabling Tracing

You can enable tracing capabilities and view traces in Control Center in two ways:

  1. The best way to configure tracing is to use the Tracing screen of the Control Center.

  2. To configure tracing programmatically, see the Tracing page for more detail.

Control Center URI

The Control Center URI is the URI where the GridGain Control Center is running. Your cluster must know that URI to be able to establish connection with Control Center.

When started with "control-center-agent" enabled, the cluster tries to connect to the following URLs:

  1. http://localhost:3000.

  2. https://portal.gridgain.com

If connection to one of the addresses is established, you should see the following messages in the output of the coordinator node:

node console output

If you run an on-premise Control Center instance, set its URI by using the management script:

{GRIDGAIN_HOME}/bin/management.sh --uri https://control_center_uri:3000

The management script also generates the token required for connecting the cluster to Control Center. See Connecting a Cluster.

You can also set the URI in the GridGain system properties: -Dcontrol.center.agent.uris=https://portal-test.gridgain.com.

Assigning Cluster Name

You can assign a user-friendly name to your cluster. The name is displayed in Control Center. Use the following command to assign a name:

{IGNITE_HOME}/bin/control.sh --change-tag newTagValue [--yes]

If you don’t set the cluster name, the auto-generated cluster name is displayed instead.