Installing Aurora

Source and binary distributions can be found on our downloads page. Installing from binary packages is recommended for most.

If our binay packages don't suite you, our package build toolchain makes it easy to build your own packages. See the instructions to learn how.

Machine profiles

Given that many of these components communicate over the network, there are numerous ways you could assemble them to create an Aurora cluster. The simplest way is to think in terms of three machine profiles:

Coordinator

Components: ZooKeeper, Aurora scheduler, Mesos master

A small number of machines (typically 3 or 5) responsible for cluster orchestration. In most cases it is fine to co-locate these components in anything but very large clusters (> 1000 machines). Beyond that point, operators will likely want to manage these services on separate machines. In particular, you will want to use separate ZooKeeper ensembles for leader election and service discovery. Otherwise a service discovery error or outage can take down the entire cluster.

In practice, 5 coordinators have been shown to reliably manage clusters with tens of thousands of machines.

Worker

Components: Aurora executor, Aurora observer, Mesos agent

The bulk of the cluster, where services will actually run.

Client

Components: Aurora client, Aurora admin client

Any machines that users submit jobs from.

Installing the scheduler

Ubuntu Trusty

  1. Install Mesos Skip down to install mesos, then run:

    sudo start mesos-master
    
  2. Install ZooKeeper

    sudo apt-get install -y zookeeperd
    
  3. Install the Aurora scheduler

    sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:openjdk-r/ppa
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install -y openjdk-8-jre-headless wget
    
    sudo update-alternatives --set java /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java
    
    wget -c https://apache.bintray.com/aurora/ubuntu-trusty/aurora-scheduler_0.17.0_amd64.deb
    sudo dpkg -i aurora-scheduler_0.17.0_amd64.deb
    

CentOS 7

  1. Install Mesos Skip down to install mesos, then run:

    sudo systemctl start mesos-master
    
  2. Install ZooKeeper

    sudo rpm -Uvh https://archive.cloudera.com/cdh4/one-click-install/redhat/6/x86_64/cloudera-cdh-4-0.x86_64.rpm
    sudo yum install -y java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless zookeeper-server
    
    sudo service zookeeper-server init
    sudo systemctl start zookeeper-server
    
  3. Install the Aurora scheduler

    sudo yum install -y wget
    
    wget -c https://apache.bintray.com/aurora/centos-7/aurora-scheduler-0.17.0-1.el7.centos.aurora.x86_64.rpm
    sudo yum install -y aurora-scheduler-0.17.0-1.el7.centos.aurora.x86_64.rpm
    

Finalizing

By default, the scheduler will start in an uninitialized mode. This is because external coordination is necessary to be certain operator error does not result in a quorum of schedulers starting up and believing their databases are empty when in fact they should be re-joining a cluster.

Because of this, a fresh install of the scheduler will need intervention to start up. First, stop the scheduler service. Ubuntu: sudo stop aurora-scheduler CentOS: sudo systemctl stop aurora

Now initialize the database:

sudo -u aurora mkdir -p /var/lib/aurora/scheduler/db
sudo -u aurora mesos-log initialize --path=/var/lib/aurora/scheduler/db

Now you can start the scheduler back up. Ubuntu: sudo start aurora-scheduler CentOS: sudo systemctl start aurora

Installing worker components

Ubuntu Trusty

  1. Install Mesos Skip down to install mesos, then run:

    start mesos-slave
    
  2. Install Aurora executor and observer

    sudo apt-get install -y python2.7 wget
    
    # NOTE: This appears to be a missing dependency of the mesos deb package and is needed
    # for the python mesos native bindings.
    sudo apt-get -y install libcurl4-nss-dev
    
    wget -c https://apache.bintray.com/aurora/ubuntu-trusty/aurora-executor_0.17.0_amd64.deb
    sudo dpkg -i aurora-executor_0.17.0_amd64.deb
    

CentOS 7

  1. Install Mesos Skip down to install mesos, then run:

    sudo systemctl start mesos-slave
    
  2. Install Aurora executor and observer

    sudo yum install -y python2 wget
    
    wget -c https://apache.bintray.com/aurora/centos-7/aurora-executor-0.17.0-1.el7.centos.aurora.x86_64.rpm
    sudo yum install -y aurora-executor-0.17.0-1.el7.centos.aurora.x86_64.rpm
    

Worker Configuration

The executor typically does not require configuration. Command line arguments can be passed to the executor using a command line argument on the scheduler.

The observer needs to be configured to look at the correct mesos directory in order to find task sandboxes. You should 1st find the Mesos working directory by looking for the Mesos agent --work_dir flag. You should see something like:

    ps -eocmd | grep "mesos-slave" | grep -v grep | tr ' ' '\n' | grep "\--work_dir"
    --work_dir=/var/lib/mesos

If the flag is not set, you can view the default value like so:

    mesos-slave --help
    Usage: mesos-slave [options]

      ...
      --work_dir=VALUE      Directory path to place framework work directories
                            (default: /tmp/mesos)
      ...

The value you find for --work_dir, /var/lib/mesos in this example, should match the Aurora observer value for --mesos-root. You can look for that setting in a similar way on a worker node by grepping for thermos_observer and --mesos-root. If the flag is not set, you can view the default value like so:

    thermos_observer -h
    Options:
      ...
      --mesos-root=MESOS_ROOT
                            The mesos root directory to search for Thermos
                            executor sandboxes [default: /var/lib/mesos]
      ...

In this case the default is /var/lib/mesos and we have a match. If there is no match, you can either adjust the mesos-master start script(s) and restart the master(s) or else adjust the Aurora observer start scripts and restart the observers. To adjust the Aurora observer:

Ubuntu Trusty

sudo sh -c 'echo "MESOS_ROOT=/tmp/mesos" >> /etc/default/thermos'

CentOS 7

Make an edit to add the --mesos-root flag resulting in something like:

grep -A5 OBSERVER_ARGS /etc/sysconfig/thermos
OBSERVER_ARGS=(
  --port=1338
  --mesos-root=/tmp/mesos
  --log_to_disk=NONE
  --log_to_stderr=google:INFO
)

Installing the client

Ubuntu Trusty

sudo apt-get install -y python2.7 wget

wget -c https://apache.bintray.com/aurora/ubuntu-trusty/aurora-tools_0.17.0_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i aurora-tools_0.17.0_amd64.deb

CentOS 7

sudo yum install -y python2 wget

wget -c https://apache.bintray.com/aurora/centos-7/aurora-tools-0.17.0-1.el7.centos.aurora.x86_64.rpm
sudo yum install -y aurora-tools-0.17.0-1.el7.centos.aurora.x86_64.rpm

Mac OS X

brew upgrade
brew install aurora-cli

Client Configuration

Client configuration lives in a json file that describes the clusters available and how to reach them. By default this file is at /etc/aurora/clusters.json.

Jobs may be submitted to the scheduler using the client, and are described with job configurations expressed in .aurora files. Typically you will maintain a single job configuration file to describe one or more deployment environments (e.g. dev, test, prod) for a production job.

Installing Mesos

Mesos uses a single package for the Mesos master and agent. As a result, the package dependencies are identical for both.

Mesos on Ubuntu Trusty

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv E56151BF
DISTRO=$(lsb_release -is | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
CODENAME=$(lsb_release -cs)

echo "deb http://repos.mesosphere.io/${DISTRO} ${CODENAME} main" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mesosphere.list
sudo apt-get -y update

# Use `apt-cache showpkg mesos | grep [version]` to find the exact version.
sudo apt-get -y install mesos=1.1.0-2.0.107.ubuntu1404_amd64.deb

Mesos on CentOS 7

sudo rpm -Uvh https://repos.mesosphere.io/el/7/noarch/RPMS/mesosphere-el-repo-7-1.noarch.rpm
sudo yum -y install mesos-1.1.0

Troubleshooting

So you've started your first cluster and are running into some issues? We've collected some common stumbling blocks and solutions in our Troubleshooting guide to help get you moving.