Overrides in Orleans Configuration

If you look at the standard OrleansConfiguration.xml configuration file you get with Orleans, it looks something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<OrleansConfiguration xmlns="urn:orleans">
  <Globals>
    <StorageProviders>
      <Provider Type="Orleans.Storage.MemoryStorage" Name="MemoryStore" />
    </StorageProviders>
    <SeedNode Address="localhost" Port="11111" />
  </Globals>
  <Defaults>
    <Networking Address="localhost" Port="11111" />
    <ProxyingGateway Address="localhost" Port="30000" />
    <Tracing DefaultTraceLevel="Info" TraceToConsole="true" TraceToFile="{0}-{1}.log">
      <TraceLevelOverride LogPrefix="Application" TraceLevel="Info" />
    </Tracing>
    <Statistics MetricsTableWriteInterval="30s" PerfCounterWriteInterval="30s" LogWriteInterval="300s" WriteLogStatisticsToTable="true"/>
  </Defaults>
  <Override Node="Primary">
    <Networking Address="localhost" Port="11111" />
    <ProxyingGateway Address="localhost" Port="30000" />
  </Override>
</OrleansConfiguration>

This configuration starts a silo listening on port 30000 (ProxyingGateway), and other silos can talk to it on port 11111 (Networking). It also identifies a SeedNode, which is the primary silo in the cluster. The seed node address and port match those specified for this silo, which makes this the primary.

You’ll also notice the Override section at the bottom, which specifies the same ProxyingGateway and Networking ports again.

In this case, the Override section doesn’t do much, but suppose we want to start a secondary silo? We can specify the ports for a secondary node to use here, like this (in this case a silo on the same machine, so on different port numbers):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<OrleansConfiguration xmlns="urn:orleans">
  <Globals>
  ... 
  </Globals>
  <Defaults>
  ...
  </Defaults>
  <Override Node="Primary">
    <Networking Address="localhost" Port="11111" />
    <ProxyingGateway Address="localhost" Port="30000" />
  </Override>
  <Override Node="Secondary">
    <Networking Address="localhost" Port="11112" />
    <ProxyingGateway Address="localhost" Port="30002" />
  </Override>
</OrleansConfiguration>

This allows us to use the same configuration file for both a primary and a secondary node, as the other settings will be the same (they must all specify the same primary (seed node)).

To make use of the override, when you start the silo, just specify the name as the first argument.

$ OrleansHost.exe Primary
$ OrleansHost.exe Secondary

You can also specify the configuration file you want to use, in case you have several (the default is OrleansConfiguration.xml).

$ OrleansHost.exe Primary MyConfiguration.xml

Interestingly, when starting a number of silos it only seems necessary to tell a client about one of silos (a primary or secondary) it seems to figure out the cluster members automatically.

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Public IP Addresses for Amazon

I previously blogged about the public IP address ranges for Azure.

The public IP addresses ranges for Amazon has recently been updated. Amazon has over 8 million addresses, which is 8 times the number Azure has.

Interestingly, these are not so evenly distributed:

Raw data:

DC	Total public IP addresses
US East (Northern Virginia)	3694592
US West (Oregon)	1507328
EU (Ireland)	1332224
Asia Pacific (Tokyo)	739328
US West (Northern California)	655360
Asia Pacific (Sydney)	327680
Asia Pacific (Singapore)	313344
South America (Sao Paulo)	245760
China (Beijing)	65536
GovCloud	16384
TOTAL	8897536

I have also updated my tool to look up which DC a website is hosted in, to include the Amazon IP ranges.

Enabling SSL for Self Hosted Nancy

One of the things I like about Nancy is the ease of creating self hosted HTTP services.

Here’s how to enable HTTPS for your service.

First of all, create your SSL certificate:

$ openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem
$ openssl pkcs12 -export -in cert.pem -inkey key.pem -out mycert.pfx

Then go to ‘Manage Computer Certificates’ in the start menu (I’m using Windows 8.1).

Right click on ‘Personal’ and import the freshly created mycert.pfx.

Now go to your newly installed certificate, and get the thumbprint:

Now you need to register the URL with Windows:

$ netsh http add urlacl url=https://+:4443/ user=YOUR_USERNAME
$ netsh http add sslcert ipport=0.0.0.0:4443 certhash=‎YOUR_THUMBPRINT_WITHOUT_SPACES appid={06aabebd-3a91-4b80-8a15-adfd3c8a0b14} 

You need to substitute your username, and the certificate thumbprint you copied (without the spaces)

The appid is just a random guid, feel free to create your own.

Now start nancy on this Uri https://localhost:4443/.

using (var host = new NancyHost(new Uri("https://localhost:4443/")))
{
    host.Start();
    Console.ReadKey();
}

Public IP Addresses for Microsoft Azure

Microsoft publish a list of public IP addresses for the compute services hosted in their Azure Datacenters. When they say ‘compute’ they also include SQL Database, and the storage accounts seem to be included too.

I thought it would be interesting to write a script to count the total number of IP addresses available for each DC.

Here’s a pretty graph.

Whilst the number of public IPs is no way of working out the number of machines provisioned in each DC, it does at least give you an idea of the magnitude of each of the regions.

Some interesting things to note:

1. The EU data centers are similar sizes, Dublin being slightly bigger.
2. The 5 DCs in Asia, Brazil and Japan added together are smaller than US West.
3. The total number of IPs is just over 1 million.
4. There seems to be a step change between the largest 6, the next 4, and then the 3 small (and new) DCs in Japan and Brazil.
5. US West is 28 times larger than Brazil South.
6. Almost 60% of the IPs are in the USA.

Here’s my processed data in table:

DC	Total public IP addresses
uswest	179504
useast	155808
europenorth	150400
europewest	144320
usnorth	118112
ussouth	109120
asiaeast	62384
uscentral	62336
asiasoutheast	57440
useast2	46832
japanwest	18912
japaneast	10976
brazilsouth	6288
TOTAL	1122432

I think it will be really interesting to keep an eye on the IP ranges, and see how they change over time (or is it just me?).

I also published a tool to look up if an IP (or domain name) is hosted in Azure, it also tells you which DC it’s in.