Finding out sources of connections to MongoDB cluster - database

The "Real Time Metrics" panel of my MongoDB Atlas cluster, shows 36 connections, even though I terminated all server apps that were supposed to be connected to it. Currently nothing should be connected to it, but I still see those 36 connections. I tried pausing the cluster and then resuming it - the connections came back. Is there any way for me to find out where are they coming from? OR, terminating all connections.

Each connection is supposed to provide with it what is called "app metadata". This is supposed to always include:
The driver identifier (e.g. pymongo 1.2.3)
The platform of the client (e.g. linux amd64)
Additionally, you can provide your own information to be sent as part of client metadata which you can use to identify your application. See e.g. https://docs.mongodb.com/ruby-driver/master/tutorials/ruby-driver-create-client/ :app_name option.
Atlas has internal processes that connect to cluster nodes and cluster nodes communicate with each other also. All of these add to connection count seen on each node.
To figure out where connections are coming from:
Read the server logs (which you have to download first) to obtain the client metadata sent with each connection.
Hopefully this will provide enough clues to identify cluster to cluster connections. You should also be able to tell those by source IPs which you should be able to dig out of cluster configuration.
Atlas connections should be using either Go or Java drivers, if you don't use those in your own applications this would be an easy way of telling those apart.
Add app name to all of your application connections to eliminate those from the unknown ones.
There is no facility provided by MongoDB server to terminate connections from clients. You can kill operations and sessions but connections used for those operations would remain until the clients close them. When clients close connections depends on the particular driver used and connection pool settings, see e.g. https://docs.mongodb.com/ruby-driver/master/tutorials/ruby-driver-create-client/#connection-pooling.

Related

What is the cause of a sporadic ORA-12599: TNS:cryptographic checksum mismatch?

In our production environment there are sometimes peaks of ORA-12599 errors the connection works otherwise.
The description is not quite clear to me.
Cause: The data received is not the same as the data sent.
Action:
Attempt the transaction again. If error persists, check (and correct)
the integrity of your physical connection.
https://www.oraexcel.com/database-oracle-11gR2-ORA-12599
Does that mean there is a problem with my network cable? Or any other Hardware?
Because our DBA said the error can be caused by a configuration issue on the client side.
Edit:
It started without any changes on the client or server side. And there are spikes. 80 errors in an hour and then no errors for 4 hours while the load is more or less constant
It can mean a mismatch in how the client and the server are wishing to communicate (in encrypted fashion). For example, trying to connect to an 11g database with 10g JDBC drivers will get this because the encryption implementation changed between these versions.
Check your local (ie, client) sqlnet.ora file - you may need to opt for a different method or change the order of them.
The error can be typically be ignored (its informational) but using the latest drivers will normally resolve the issue.
We had sporadic ORA-12599 errors and also ORA-24300 ("bad value for mode") in a Python web app using Flask and uwsgi. It turned out to be caused by multiple worker processes writing and reading to/from the same TCP connection to the DB, giving chaotic communications on the socket.
In our setup this was caused by creating the TCP connections to the DB before uwsgi forked the workers, and the file descriptors being inherited. We fixed this by using uwgsi's lazy-apps mode.
See also this question.

Sql Server JDBC Connection Reset Error : Only on Amazon EC2

Context: The Cloud
We have a java-based web application that we normally host on our own servers. Recently we used Amazon Web Services (AWS EC2) cloud to host an instance.
This "cloud setup" matches our typical "on site" setup: one server for the app server, another server for the database server. (Several app servers point to the same database server)
The problem
In this cloud setup, we receive intermittent "connection reset by peer errors" between the database and the jdbc driver, where at (seemingly) random intervals and at random points in the codebase, the database connection fails.
Here are a few error excerpts for the log
Stack Trace Example 1:
at com.participate.pe.genericdisplay.client.taglib.GenDisplayViewTag.doStartTag(GenDisplayViewTag.java:77)
... 75 more
Caused by: com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: The connection is closed.
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException.makeFromDriverError(SQLServerException.java:170)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection.checkClosed(SQLServerConnection.java:304)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection.getMetaData(SQLServerConnection.java:1734)
at org.jboss.resource.adapter.jdbc.WrappedConnection.getMetaData(WrappedConnection.java:354)
Stack Trace Example 2
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Caused by: com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: Connection reset
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection.terminate(SQLServerConnection.java:1368)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection.terminate(SQLServerConnection.java:1355)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.TDSChannel.read(IOBuffer.java:1532)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.TDSReader.readPacket(IOBuffer.java:3274)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.TDSCommand.startResponse(IOBuffer.java:4437)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.TDSCommand.startResponse(IOBuffer.java:4389)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection$1ConnectionCommand.doExecute(SQLServerConnection.java:1457)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.TDSCommand.execute(IOBuffer.java:4026)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection.executeCommand(SQLServerConnection.java:1416)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection.connectionCommand(SQLServerConnection.java:1462)
at com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerConnection.setAutoCommit(SQLServerConnection.java:1610)
at org.jboss.resource.adapter.jdbc.BaseWrapperManagedConnection.checkTransaction(BaseWrapperManagedConnection.java:429)
Technical Environment
Jboss 4.2.2.GA (Jboss-Web 2.0/ Tomcat 6)
MSSQL 2005 2.0 jdbc driver
Some points
We have never seen this problem in
our own environment (i.e. own data centers) running the application for several years
This led me to conclude "something funny is going on with Amazon network environment". I may be wrong/missing something/etc.
This problem only occurs with our application. We have other java and php applications which have not had this problem. The other java application uses a different jdbc driver (jtds, afaik)
It doesn't seem like a simple connection timeout
Questions
-Has anyone seen this before?
-If it's an EC2 "known issue", can we configure our way around the problem (i.e. make sure everything is on its own subnet or virtual private cloud (vpc) ?
-Any jdbc driver settings to get past this problem?
** Update **
I've extended and increased the bounty on this question.
On extra bit of information: the two virtual servers (database and application server) were on different subnets--i.e. one hop between the two servers.
In a non-cloud environment we have "zero hops" bewtewn the two servers.
Our hosting admins said we had no control over the subnets of our EC2 instances. This made me wonder if virtual private cloud would help.
thanks in advance
will
Not sure if this is related or not. We experienced something similar with an app that we were running in the EC2 environment. Same symptom, that the database connection would intermittently close. We were using MSSQL 1.2 driver. Also, we would see the errors usually after a delay or idle time with the connection. Our assumption (never proven) was that something in the network layer was closing the connection and the client wasn't detecting it, so it became stale.
We were able to work around it because we were using commons connection pools, and had the pool recreate the connection on failure. We eventually moved the application out of EC2 and didn't see the issue again.
Just a word of caution on usind DBCP/connection pool features to mitigate the issue - the more you enable 'testOnBorrow' and other features, the more you can introduce latency or other performance changing affects on the system. I don't know if DBCP still does this or not, but a few years ago it would generate actual test queries to test the connection - full stack, database responses - not just at the network layer. The above link from Brian brings back horrific memories from the early 2000s on surrounding re-try logic for JDBC connection management.
Anyway, it's tough to really root cause this, other than gather evidence and eliminate the 'seemingly random' to a specific set of conditions:
You could try to throw up a Wireshark/PCAP trace, find when it happens, and send the results to both Amazon and Microsoft to see if they can root cause it
You could try the above with certain test harnesses to isolate the problem (JMeter tests to get concurrency up), bounce the network connection, watch for recovery, etc
You could try alternative versions of SQL Server to discount a SQL Server/JDBC driver bug that has since been fixed.
If DNS is used in connection strings, could use IP addresses to validate nslookup issues
I'm not a SQL Server expert, but another route for research could be within the related products domain - e.g. see if anyone experienced similar issues with TFS/Sharepoint (e.g. such as http://nickhoggard.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/further-experiences-with-tfs-2010-beta-2-on-amazon-ec2/ )
I have seen this issue in both the EC2 environment and the Windows Azure environment. I think connection retry logic needs to be a standard part of your design when working in a distributed computing environment.
This article is for SQL Azure - but I think it equally applies to EC2 and all drivers.
I can also confirm that this happens and will spin up a lower priority investigation since it's not production critical.
Our production servers are in our data center. We use developer laptops to run our applications. Neither of these get this issue once we configured c3p0 connection pool timeouts and test period (see article: http://www.codefin.net/2007/05/hibernate-and-mysql-connection-timeouts.html).
However, we do have a development staging server that is in EC2 and it does indeed happen there. If I find something that seems to work, I'll ping back. Also, I'm using mysql. I see that you are using MS SQL Server so it is across database vendors.

General network error after a night of inactivity

For some time now our flagship application has been having mysterious errors. The error message is the generic
[DBNETLIB][ConnectionWrite (send()).]General network error. Check your network documentation.
This is reliably reproduced by leaving the app open for the night and resuming work in the morning. Since it's a backend server app this is a normal scenario.
The funny thing is - we've migrated from SQL Server 7 to 2000 to 2008 and the issue is present on all of them. But what seems to matter is the OS on which we run the app. On WinXP it works fine, on Vista/7 it fails. So the problem is at the client end.
The results of Google on the error message cover a very wide spectrum of different causes (since this is a very generic error) and none of the scenarios found there are similar to ours.
So perhaps someone around here will know what the problem is in our case?
You should be able to reproduce this error condition on demand by:
1. Opening a database connection (in your client application)
2. Unplugging the network cable
3. Plugging network cable back in (wait until the network connection is restored)
4. Using the previously opened connection to query the database
As far as I can tell from experience, client side ADO code is not able to consistently determine if an underlying network connection is actually valid or not. Checking if the database connection is open (in the client code) returns true. However, performing any operations on that connection results in a General network error.
The connection pool appears to be able to determine when a connection goes 'bad' so it never returns a bad connection to the application. It simply opens a new connection instead.
So, if a database connection is kept alive for a long time (used or unused) by the application, the underlying TCP/IP connectivity can get broken.
The bottom line is that database connections should be closed and returned back to the connection pool when not in use.
Edit
Also, depending on the number of clients connecting to the db, not using the connection pool can cause another issue. You may hit the maximum number of sockets open on the server side. This is from memory. Once a connection is closed on the client side, the connection on the server goes into a TIME_WAIT state. By default, the server socket takes about 4 minutes to close, so it is not available to other clients during that time. The bottom line is that there is a limited number of available sockets on the server. Keeping too many connections open can create a problem.
One project I worked on easily hit this socket limit with around 120 users. A new 'feature' was added that absolutely hammered the server, and after a few hours of using the app, things would suddenly slow to a crawl for everyone. SQL server was not closing enough sockets in time for new connection requests. Although there are 65K sockets altogether, only the first 5000 are made available to the ADO (this is a default registry setting thing, so can be changed).
The number of sockets in TIME_WAIT state would slowly build up until the OS would not allocate any more. So clients had to wait until server side sockets closed and a new connection could then be created.
Have you tried disabling SNP/TCP Chimneying?
Had a similar error. For me it was indirectly caused by mismatched calls to WSACleanup and WSAStartup.
The program called WSACleanup more times than WSAStartup. This would cause a reference counter (somewhere in the sockets library) to reach zero too early.
I think effectively from that moment on all sockets owned by the process are broken.
And this would also kill the SQL client since it uses sockets to 'talk' to the SQL server as well.

SQL Server Message Broker - External Activation

I have a Sql Server inside a restricted network. I need to somehow get data from the outside in.
I would like to harness the use of Message Broker. My thinking is the external db places a message on a queue then I require a service that sits inside of the restricted LAN to listen (poll?) for these messages and then act upon them.
I cannot have the external queue initiate the normal broker conversation into the restricted LAN.
My question is should I be looking at the broker external activator to sit inside the restricted LAN and listen for new messages and then act upon them? Has anyone got any experience with this. Documentation / examples for external activator are pretty thin on the ground and monologues are not supported in message broker yet.
Is msmq a better option?
My recommendation would be to allow Service Broker to deliver the message all the way into the SQL Server instance inside the restricted lan. That will require the restricted LAN to allow incomming connection (allow the inside server to listen and accept). MSMQ would be no different, the MSMQ port(s) would have to be open in the restricted LAN.
If you want to use a dedicated process inside the restricted LAN that 'gets' the data inside then you must ensure the transactional consistency between the external server 'get' and the internal server write: the two operation have to be enrolled into a distributed transaction and the DTC protocol itself needs to be allowed to penetrate into the restricted LAN. So some ports still need to be open in the restricted LAN.
What your LAN security designers need to understand is that Service Broker connections are not Transact-SQL connections. Service Broker uses a dedicated protocol that only allows exchange of Service Broker messages. All traffic is encrypted and secured with RC4 or AES encryption. SSB cryptography is FIPS compliant. Allowing for Service Broker traffic to the SQL Server inside is probably the most secure way of allowing data from the external server to reach the secured server. In Service Broker networking there is no concept of 'client' and 'server' and one cannot design the network allowing connections only in one dirrection (eg. unlike say HTTP, which can be designed to connect from inside to outside but not the other way). SSB networking requires both machines involved to be able to connect to each other, because response messages can come after long delays (hours, days, consider the case when a queue is backed up so it takes a long time until the message is processed and a response is sent). IS not feasable to keep connecitons open for days to expect a response, so the receiver of a message must be able to connect back to the sender to deliver a response.

Do connection string DNS lookups get cached?

Suppose the following:
I have a database set up on database.mywebsite.com, which resolves to IP 111.111.1.1, running from a local DNS server on our network.
I have countless ASP, ASP.NET and WinForms applications that use a connection string utilising database.mywebsite.com as the server name, all running from the internal network.
Then the box running the database dies, and I switch over to a new box with an IP of 222.222.2.2.
So, I update the DNS for database.mywebsite.com to point to 222.222.2.2.
Will all the applications and computers running them have cached the old resolved IP address?
I'm assuming they will have.
Any suggestions along the lines of "don't have your IP change each time you switch box" are not too welcome as I cannot control this aspect of the situation, unfortunately. We are currently using the machine name of the box, which changes every time it dies and all apps etc. have to be updated with the new machine name. It hurts.
Even if the DNS is not cached local to the machine, it will likely be cached somewhere along the DNS chain between the machine and the name servers, at least for a short while. My understanding is this situation would usually be handled with IP takeover where you just make the new machine 111.111.1.1.
Probably a question for serverfault.
You're looking for DNS TTL (Time To Live) I guess.. In my opinion applications may cache the IP for at most the value of the TTL. I'm afraid however that some applications/technologies might actually cache it longer (agian in my opinion completely wrong)
Each machine will cache the ip address.
The length of time it is cached is the TTL (Time To Live). This is a setting on your DNS server, if you set it very low say 5 mins, then you show be up and running fairly quikly. A bit of a hack but it should work.
Yes, the other comments are correct in that what controls this is the DNS TTL set for the hostname database.mywebsite.com.
You'll have to decide what the maximum amount of time you're willing to wait for if you have a failure on your primary address (111.111.1.1) after you make the switch to the secondary address. Lower settings will give you a quicker recovery time, but will also increase the load and bandwidth to your DNS server because clients will have to re-query it to refresh their cache more often.
You can use nslookup using the -d option from your cmd prompt to see what your default TTL times and remaining TTL times are for the DNS server you are querying.
%> nslookup -d google.com
You should assume that they are cashed for two reasons not clearly mentioned before:
1- Many "modern" versions of OS families do DNS caching.
2- Many applications do DNS caching or have poor error/failure detection on live connections and/or opening new connections. This would possibly include your database client.
Also, this is probably not well documented. I did some googling, and found this for MySQL:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/connector-net-programming-connecting-connection-string.html#connector-net-programming-connecting-errors
It does not clearly explain its behavior in this regard.
I had a similar issue with a web site that disables the application pool recycling features and runs for weeks on end. Sometimes, a clustered SQL Server box would restart and for some reason, my SqlConnection's were not reconnecting. I was getting the error:
A network-related or instance-specific
error occurred while establishing a
connection to SQL Server. The server
was not found or was not accessible.
Verify that the instance name is
correct and that SQL Server is
configured to allow remote
connections. (provider: Named Pipes
Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a
connection to SQL Server)
The server was there - and running - in fact, if I just recycled the app pool, the app would work fine - but I don't like recycling app pools!
The connections that were being held in the connection pool were somehow using old connection information, and that could have been old IP addresses. This is what seems so similar to the poster's question, that it appears to be cached DNS information, because as soon as some sort of a cache is cleared, the app works fine.
This is how I solved it - by forcing all of the connections in the pool to be re-created:
Try
' Example: SqlDependency, but this could also be any SqlConnection.Open call
Dim result As Boolean = SqlClient.SqlDependency.Start(ConnStr)
Catch sqlex As SqlClient.SqlException
SqlClient.SqlConnection.ClearAllPools()
End Try
The code sample is just the boiled-down basics - it should be tweaked for your situation!
The DNS gets cached, but for any server that resolves to the wrong ip address, you can update the HOSTS file of the server and the ip should be updated immediately. This could be a solution if you have a limited amount of servers accessing your database server.

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