Configuring High Availability with Local Launcher in RStudio Workbench
Overview
If your intended architecture involves multiple servers for RStudio Workbench, formerly RStudio Server Pro, and you want to enable Jupyter Notebook/VSCode support without integrating with a resource manager, then you will have to configure local launcher load balancing/high availability (HA). This document provides step-by-step procedures to achieve this architecture.
In this configuration we will:
- Perform regular load balancing for RStudio Workbench servers
- Then, add additional configuration for load balancing the launcher extension
Prerequisites
Step 1: Database Configuration
When running RStudio Workbench in a load balanced configuration, a Postgres
database is required. You must create an empty database for RStudio Server to
connect to and you must not share this database with other products or services.
Info
The minimum supported PostgreSQL version is 9.5.
-
In all the RStudio Workbench servers in your cluster, update the
/etc/rstudio/database.conf as:
File: /etc/rstudio/database.conf
# Note: when connecting to a PostgreSQL database, a default empty RStudio database must first be created!
provider=postgresql
# Specifies the host (hostname or IP address) of the database host
host=localhost
# Specifies the database to connect to
database=rstudio
# Specifies the TCP port where the database is listening for connections
port=5432
# Specifies the database connection username
username=postgres
# Specifies the database connection password. This may be encrypted with the secure-cookie-key.
# The encrypted password can be generated using the helper command rstudio-server encrypt-password.
# It is strongly recommended that you encrypt the password!
password=postgres
Please make sure that this file is exactly the same on all servers.
For more information, refer to the Database configuration section of RStudio Workbench Admin guide.
Step 2: Configuring load balancing at server level
In order to fully load balance this RStudio Workbench cluster, first you need to load balance the servers.
The details for configuring load balancing at the server level is provided in the Load Balancing section of the RStudio Workbench Admin guide.
Step 3: Configuring load balancing at launcher level
After you have completed load balancing configuration at server level, please perform the following steps across each server instance in the cluster:
-
On all servers, make sure the local launcher section in /etc/rstudio/launcher.conf looks exactly the same. One sample configuration is:
File: /etc/rstudio/launcher.conf
[cluster]
name=Local
type=Local
-
Create a directory in your NFS shared storage and make rstudio-server as the owner:
Terminal
sudo mkdir -p {NFS-Share}/Local
sudo chown rstudio-server {NFS-Share}/Local
Note
If your server-user is something other than rstudio-server, then please update the above command accordingly. Also, update the command if your cluster name is something other than Local.
-
Now on each server in the Workbench cluster:
- Mount the path created above.
- Edit the
/etc/rstudio/launcher.local.conf to set the scratch-path variable as:
File: /etc/rstudio/launcher.local.conf
scratch-path={NFS-Share}/Local
-
Each local plugin node must be able to directly connect to the launcher
service located on other nodes in the load-balanced cluster. Verify that the
default port for the launcher (port 5559) on all servers is listening for
incoming requests. You can use a command like this to test:
Terminal
curl -i myip.com:5559/status
Note
If you are using an external load balancer in your architecture for load
balancing this RStudio Workbench cluster, then we recommend using sticky
sessions so as to maintain the most consistent view of the job state of the
cluster.
-
Restart both rstudio-server and rstudio-launcher service on all servers.
Terminal
sudo rstudio-server restart
sudo rstudio-launcher restart
Additional Documentation
If you are looking for additional information, it can can be found in the Local Launcher Load Balancing
section of the RStudio Job Launcher Admin guide.