Node Specific Settings

Table of Contents

Basics

cluster.name
Default: crate
Runtime: no

The name of the CrateDB cluster the node should join to.

node.name
Runtime: no

The name of the node. If no name is configured a random one will be generated.

Note

Node names must be unique in a CrateDB cluster.

node.max_local_storage_nodes
Default: 1
Runtime: no

Defines how many nodes are allowed to be started on the same machine using the same configured data path defined via path.data.

Node Types

CrateDB supports different kinds of nodes.

The following settings can be used to differentiate nodes upon startup:

node.master
Default: true
Runtime: no

Whether or not this node is able to get elected as master node in the cluster.

node.data
Default: true
Runtime: no

Whether or not this node will store data.

Using different combinations of these two settings, you can create four different types of node. Each type of node is differentiate by what types of load it will handle.

The four types of node possible are:

Master

No Master

Data

Can handle all loads.

Handles request handling and query execution loads.

No Data

Can handle cluster management loads.

Handles request handling loads.

Nodes marked as node.master will only handle cluster management loads if they are elected as the cluster master. All other loads are shared equally.

Read-only node

node.sql.read_only
Default: false
Runtime: no

If set to true, the node will only allow SQL statements which are resulting in read operations.

Hosts

network.host
Default: _local_
Runtime: no

The IP address CrateDB will bind itself to. This setting sets both the network.bind_host and network.publish_host values.

network.bind_host
Default: _local_
Runtime: no

This setting determines to which address CrateDB should bind itself to.

network.publish_host
Default: _local_
Runtime: no

This setting is used by a CrateDB node to publish its own address to the rest of the cluster.

Tip

Apart from IPv4 and IPv6 addresses there are some special values that can be used for all above settings:

_local_

Any loopback addresses on the system, for example 127.0.0.1.

_site_

Any site-local addresses on the system, for example 192.168.0.1.

_global_

Any globally-scoped addresses on the system, for example 8.8.8.8.

_[INTERFACE]_

Addresses of a network interface, for example _en0_.

Ports

http.port
Runtime: no

This defines the TCP port range to which the CrateDB HTTP service will be bound to. It defaults to 4200-4300. Always the first free port in this range is used. If this is set to an integer value it is considered as an explicit single port.

The HTTP protocol is used for the REST endpoint which is used by all clients except the Java client.

http.publish_port
Runtime: no

The port HTTP clients should use to communicate with the node. It is necessary to define this setting if the bound HTTP port (http.port) of the node is not directly reachable from outside, e.g. running it behind a firewall or inside a Docker container.

transport.tcp.port
Runtime: no

This defines the TCP port range to which the CrateDB transport service will be bound to. It defaults to 4300-4400. Always the first free port in this range is used. If this is set to an integer value it is considered as an explicit single port.

The transport protocol is used for internal node-to-node communication.

transport.publish_port
Runtime: no

The port that the node publishes to the cluster for its own discovery. It is necessary to define this setting when the bound tranport port (transport.tcp.port) of the node is not directly reachable from outside, e.g. running it behind a firewall or inside a Docker container.

psql.port
Runtime: no

This defines the TCP port range to which the CrateDB Postgres service will be bound to. It defaults to 5432-5532. Always the first free port in this range is used. If this is set to an integer value it is considered as an explicit single port.

Paths

path.conf
Runtime: no

Filesystem path to the directory containing the configuration files crate.yml and log4j2.properties.

path.data
Runtime: no

Filesystem path to the directory where this CrateDB node stores its data (table data and cluster metadata).

Multiple paths can be set by using a comma separated list and each of these paths will hold full shards (instead of striping data across them). In case CrateDB finds striped shards at the provided locations (from CrateDB <0.55.0), these shards will be migrated automatically on startup.

path.logs
Runtime: no

Filesystem path to a directory where log files should be stored.

Can be used as a variable inside log4j2.properties.

For example:

appender:
  file:
    file: ${path.logs}/${cluster.name}.log
path.repo
Runtime: no

A list of filesystem or UNC paths where repositories of type fs may be stored.

Without this setting a CrateDB user could write snapshot files to any directory that is writable by the CrateDB process. To safeguard against this security issue, the possible paths have to be whitelisted here.

See also location setting of repository type fs.

Plugins

plugin.mandatory
Runtime: no

A list of plugins that are required for a node to startup.

If any plugin listed here is missing, the CrateDB node will fail to start.

CPU

processors
Runtime: no

The number of available processes is automatically guessed, and so most of the time you will not need to configure this explicitly.

However, in some situations, such as when CrateDB is being run on top of Docker, the number of processors may be guessed incorrectly. If this happens, you can manually configure the number of processors using this setting.

You can also use this setting to manually constrain the number of CPUs made available to CrateDB. You might want to do this if you’re running CrateDB in a multitenant setup (i.e. more than one CrateDB node running on the same hardware).

Memory

bootstrap.memory_lock
Runtime: no
Default: false

CrateDB performs poorly when the JVM starts swapping: you should ensure that it never swaps. If set to true, CrateDB will use the mlockall system call on startup to ensure that the memory pages of the CrateDB process are locked into RAM.

Garbage Collection

CrateDB logs if JVM garbage collection on different memory pools takes too long. The following settings can be used to adjust these timeouts:

monitor.jvm.gc.collector.young.warn
Default: 1000ms
Runtime: no

CrateDB will log a warning message if it takes more than the configured timespan to collect the Eden Space (heap).

monitor.jvm.gc.collector.young.info
Default: 700ms
Runtime: no

CrateDB will log an info message if it takes more than the configured timespan to collect the Eden Space (heap).

monitor.jvm.gc.collector.young.debug
Default: 400ms
Runtime: no

CrateDB will log a debug message if it takes more than the configured timespan to collect the Eden Space (heap).

monitor.jvm.gc.collector.old.warn
Default: 10000ms
Runtime: no

CrateDB will log a warning message if it takes more than the configured timespan to collect the Old Gen / Tenured Gen (heap).

monitor.jvm.gc.collector.old.info
Default: 5000ms
Runtime: no

CrateDB will log an info message if it takes more than the configured timespan to collect the Old Gen / Tenured Gen (heap).

monitor.jvm.gc.collector.old.debug
Default: 2000ms
Runtime: no

CrateDB will log a debug message if it takes more than the configured timespan to collect the Old Gen / Tenured Gen (heap).

Authentication

Note

Authentication is an enterprise feature.

Trust Authentication

auth.trust.http_default_user
Runtime: no
Default: crate

The default user that should be used for authentication when clients connect to CrateDB via HTTP protocol and they do not specify a user via the Authorization request header.

Host Based Authentication

Authentication settings (auth.host_based.*) are node settings, which means that their values apply only to the node where they are applied and different nodes may have different authentication settings.

auth.host_based.enabled
Runtime: no
Default: false

Setting to enable or disable Host Based Authentication (HBA). It is disabled by default.

HBA Entries

The auth.host_based.config. setting is a group setting that can have zero, one or multiple groups that are defined by their group key (${order}) and their fields (user, address, method, protocol, ssl).

${order}:
An identifier that is used as a natural order key when looking up the host
based configuration entries. For example, an order key of a will be
looked up before an order key of b. This key guarantees that the entry
lookup order will remain independent from the insertion order of the
entries.

The Host Based Authentication (HBA) setting is a list of predicates that users can specify to restrict or allow access to CrateDB.

The meaning of the fields of the are as follows:

auth.host_based.config.${order}.user
Runtime: no
Specifies an existing CrateDB username, only crate user (superuser) is
available. If no user is specified in the entry, then all existing users
can have access.
auth.host_based.config.${order}.address
Runtime: no
The client machine addresses that the client matches, and which are allowed
to authenticate. This field may contain an IPv4 address, an IPv6 address or
an IPv4 CIDR mask. For example: 127.0.0.1 or 127.0.0.1/32. It also
may contain the special _local_ notation which will match both IPv4 and
IPv6 connections from localhost. If no address is specified in the entry,
then access to CrateDB is open for all hosts.
auth.host_based.config.${order}.method
Runtime: no
The authentication method to use when a connection matches this entry.
Valid values are trust, cert, and password. If no method is
specified, the trust method is used by default.
information about these methods.
auth.host_based.config.${order}.protocol
Runtime: no
Specifies the protocol for which the authentication entry should be used.
If no protocol is specified, then this entry will be valid for all
protocols that rely on host based authentication see Trust Method).
auth.host_based.config.${order}.ssl
Runtime: no
Default: optional
Specifies whether the client must use SSL/TLS to connect to the cluster.
If set to on then the client must be connected through SSL/TLS
otherwise is not authenticated. If set to off then the client must
not be connected via SSL/TLS otherwise is not authenticated. Finally
optional, which is the value when the option is completely skipped,
means that the client can be authenticated regardless of SSL/TLS is used
or not.

Note

auth.host_based.config.${order}.ssl is available only for pg protocol.

Example of config groups:

auth.host_based.config:
  entry_a:
    user: crate
    address: 127.16.0.0/16
  entry_b:
    method: trust
  entry_3:
    user: crate
    address: 172.16.0.0/16
    method: trust
    protocol: pg
    ssl: on

Secured Communications (SSL/TLS)

Secured communications via SSL allows you to encrypt traffic between CrateDB nodes and clients connecting to them. Connections are secured using Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Note

SSL is an enterprise feature.

ssl.http.enabled
Runtime: no
Default: false

Set this to true to enable secure communication between the CrateDB node and the client through SSL via the HTTPS protocol.

ssl.psql.enabled
Runtime: no
Default: false

Set this to true to enable secure communication between the CrateDB node and the client through SSL via the PostgreSQL wire protocol.

ssl.ingestion.mqtt.enabled
Runtime: no
Default: false

Set this to true to enable secure communication between the CrateDB node and the client through SSL via the MQTT protocol.

ssl.keystore_filepath
Runtime: no

The full path to the node keystore file.

ssl.keystore_password
Runtime: no

The password used to decrypt the keystore file defined with ssl.keystore_filepath.

ssl.keystore_key_password
Runtime: no

The password entered at the end of the keytool -genkey command.

Note

Optionally trusted CA certificates can be stored separately from the node’s keystore into a truststore for CA certificates.

ssl.truststore_filepath
Runtime: no

The full path to the node truststore file. If not defined, then only a keystore will be used.

ssl.truststore_password
Runtime: no

The password used to decrypt the truststore file defined with ssl.truststore_filepath.

Elasticsearch HTTP REST API

es.api.enabled
Default: false
Runtime: no

Enable or disable elasticsearch HTTP REST API.

Warning

This setting is deprecated and will be removed in the future.

Manipulating your data via elasticsearch API and not via SQL might result in inconsistent data. You have been warned!

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

Many browsers support the same-origin policy which requires web applications to explicitly allow requests across origins. The cross-origin resource sharing settings in CrateDB allow for configuring these.

http.cors.enabled
Default: false
Runtime: no

Enable or disable cross-origin resource sharing.

http.cors.allow-origin
Default: <empty>
Runtime: no

Define allowed origins of a request. * allows any origin (which can be a substantial security risk) and by prepending a / the string will be treated as a regular expression. For example /https?:\/\/crate.io/ will allow requests from http://crate.io and https://crate.io. This setting disallows any origin by default.

http.cors.max-age
Default: 1728000 (20 days)
Runtime: no

Max cache age of a preflight request in seconds.

http.cors.allow-methods
Default: OPTIONS, HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
Runtime: no

Allowed HTTP methods.

http.cors.allow-headers
Default: X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Content-Length
Runtime: no

Allowed HTTP headers.

http.cors.allow-credentials
Default: false
Runtime: no

Add the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header to responses.

Blobs

blobs.path
Runtime: no

Path to a filesystem directory where to store blob data allocated for this node.

By default blobs will be stored under the same path as normal data. A relative path value is interpreted as relative to CRATE_HOME.

Repositories

Repositories are used to backup a CrateDB cluster.

repositories.url.allowed_urls
Runtime: no

This setting only applies to repositories of type url.

With this setting a list of urls can be specified which are allowed to be used if a repository of type url is created.

Wildcards are supported in the host, path, query and fragment parts.

This setting is a security measure to prevent access to arbitrary resources.

In addition, the supported protocols can be restricted using the repositories.url.supported_protocols setting.

repositories.url.supported_protocols
Default: http, https, ftp, file and jar
Runtime: no

A list of protocols that are supported by repositories of type url.

The jar protocol is used to access the contents of jar files. For more info, see the java JarURLConnection documentation.

See also the path.repo Setting.

Queries

indices.query.bool.max_clause_count
Default: 8192
Runtime: no

This setting defines the maximum number of elements an array can have so that the != ANY(), LIKE ANY() and the NOT LIKE ANY() operators can be applied on it.

Note

Increasing this value to a large number (e.g. 10M) and applying those ANY operators on arrays of that length can lead to heavy memory, consumption which could cause nodes to crash with OutOfMemory exceptions.

Javascript Language

lang.js.enabled
Default: false
Runtime: no

Setting to enable the Javascript language. As The Javascript language is an experimental feature and is not securely sandboxed its disabled by default.

Note

This is an enterprise feature.

Custom Attributes

The node.attr namespace is a bag of custom attributes.

You can create any attribute you want under this namespace, like node.attr.key: value. These attributes use the node.attr namespace to distinguish them from core node attribute like node.name.

Custom attributes are not validated by CrateDB, unlike core node attributes.

Custom attributes can, however, be used to control shard allocation.

Ingestion Framework

MQTT

Settings for the MQTT Ingestion Source.

Note

The MQTT ingestion source an enterprise feature.

ingestion.mqtt.enabled
Default: false
Runtime: no

Enables the MQTT ingestion source on this node.

ingestion.mqtt.port
Default: 1883
Runtime: no

TCP port on which the endpoint is exposed.

Can either be a number, or a string defining a port range. The first free port of this range is used.

ingestion.mqtt.timeout
Default: 10s
Runtime: no

The default keep-alive timeout for establised connections.

This timeout is used if the client does not specify a keepAlive option when sending the CONNECT message.

Enterprise License

license.enterprise
Default: true
Runtime: no

This is a deprecated setting that allows you to disable the Enterprise Edition features of CrateDB, enabling you to use all community edition features of CrateDB without restrictions or license. The setting will be removed in CrateDB 4.0 and instead you’ll have to Acquire a license or switch to the Community Edition distribution.