Conductor Server

Installing¶

Requirements¶

Database: Dynomite
Indexing Backend: Elasticsearch 5.x
Servlet Container: Tomcat, Jetty, or similar running JDK 1.8 or higher

There are 3 ways in which you can install Conductor:

1. Build from source¶

To build from source, checkout the code from github and build server module using gradle build command. If you do not have gradle installed, you can run the command ./gradlew build from the project root. This produces conductor-server-all-VERSION.jar in the folder ./server/build/libs/

The jar can be executed using:

java -jar conductor-server-VERSION-all.jar

2. Download pre-built binaries from jcenter or maven central¶

Use the following coordinates:

group	artifact	version
com.netflix.conductor	conductor-server-all	2.7.+

3. Use the pre-configured Docker image¶

To build the docker images for the conductor server and ui run the commands:

cd docker
docker-compose build

After the docker images are built, run the following command to start the containers:

docker-compose up

This will create a docker container network that consists of the following images: conductor:server, conductor:ui, elasticsearch:5.6.8, and dynomite.

To view the UI, navigate to localhost:5000, to view the Swagger docs, navigate to localhost:8080.

Configuration¶

Conductor server uses a property file based configuration. The property file is passed to the Main class as a command line argument.

java -jar conductor-server-all-VERSION.jar [PATH TO PROPERTY FILE] [log4j.properties file path]

log4j.properties file path is optional and allows finer control over the logging (defaults to INFO level logging in the console).

Configuration Parameters¶

# Database persistence model.  Possible values are memory, redis, redis_cluster, redis_sentinel and dynomite.
# If omitted, the persistence used is memory
#
# memory : The data is stored in memory and lost when the server dies.  Useful for testing or demo
# redis : non-Dynomite based redis instance
# redis_cluster: AWS Elasticache Redis (cluster mode enabled).See [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonElastiCache/latest/UserGuide/Clusters.Create.CON.RedisCluster.html]
# redis_sentinel: Redis HA with Redis Sentinel. See [https://redis.io/topics/sentinel]
# dynomite : Dynomite cluster.  Use this for HA configuration.
db=dynomite

# Dynomite Cluster details.
# format is host:port:rack separated by semicolon
# for AWS Elasticache Redis (cluster mode enabled) the format is configuration_endpoint:port:us-east-1e. The region in this case does not matter
workflow.dynomite.cluster.hosts=host1:8102:us-east-1c;host2:8102:us-east-1d;host3:8102:us-east-1e

# If you are running using dynomite, also add the following line to the property 
# to set the rack/availability zone of the conductor server to be same as dynomite cluster config
EC2_AVAILABILTY_ZONE=us-east-1c

# Dynomite cluster name
workflow.dynomite.cluster.name=dyno_cluster_name

# Maximum connections to redis/dynomite
workflow.dynomite.connection.maxConnsPerHost=31

# Namespace for the keys stored in Dynomite/Redis
workflow.namespace.prefix=conductor

# Namespace prefix for the dyno queues
workflow.namespace.queue.prefix=conductor_queues

# No. of threads allocated to dyno-queues (optional)
queues.dynomite.threads=10

# Non-quorum port used to connect to local redis.  Used by dyno-queues.
# When using redis directly, set this to the same port as redis server.
# For Dynomite, this is 22122 by default or the local redis-server port used by Dynomite.
queues.dynomite.nonQuorum.port=22122

# Transport address to elasticsearch
# Specifying multiple node urls is not supported. specify one of the nodes' url, or a load balancer.
workflow.elasticsearch.url=localhost:9300

# Name of the elasticsearch cluster
workflow.elasticsearch.index.name=conductor

# Additional modules (optional)
conductor.additional.modules=class_extending_com.google.inject.AbstractModule

High Availability Configuration¶

Conductor servers are stateless and can be deployed on multiple servers to handle scale and availability needs. The scalability of the server is achieved by scaling the Dynomite cluster along with dyno-queues which is used for queues.

Clients connects to the server via HTTP load balancer or using Discovery (on NetflixOSS stack).

Using Standalone Redis / ElastiCache¶

Conductor server can be used with a standlone Redis or ElastiCache server. To configure the server, change the config to use the following:

db=redis

# For AWS Elasticache Redis (cluster mode enabled) the format is configuration_endpoint:port:us-east-1e.
# The region in this case does not matter
workflow.dynomite.cluster.hosts=server_address:server_port:us-east-1e
workflow.dynomite.connection.maxConnsPerHost=31

queues.dynomite.nonQuorum.port=server_port

Setting up Zookeeper to enable Distributed Locking Service.¶

See Technical Details for more details about this.

Locking Service is disabled by default. Enable this by setting:

decider.locking.enabled: true

Setup Zookeeper cluster connection string:

zk.connection=1.2.3.4:2181,5.6.7.8:2181

Optionally, configure the default timeouts:

zk.sessionTimeoutMs
zk.connectionTimeoutMs

Default Workflow Archiving Module Configuration¶

Conductor server does not perform automated workflow execution data cleaning by default. Archiving module (if enabled) removes all execution data from conductor persistence storage immediately upon workflow completion or termination, but keeps archived index data in elastic search.

To benefit form archiving module you have to do the following:

1. Enable Archiving Module¶

Set property in server configuration.

# Comma-separated additional conductor modules
conductor.additional.modules=com.netflix.conductor.contribs.ArchivingWorkflowModule

2. Enable Workflow Status Listener¶

Archiving module is triggered only if workflow status listener is enabled on workflow definition level. To enable it you have to set workflowStatusListenerEnabled property to true. See sample workflow definition below:

{
  "name": "e2e_approval_v4",
  "description": "Approval Process",
  "workflowStatusListenerEnabled": true, 
  "tasks": []
}