Switched content_vector to 1536-dim (text-embedding-3-small, thepeach production
width) and ran the realistic peach mix (feed-profile reads + signal writes) on the
m11p6 mTLS cluster.
Result: 1536-dim costs ~nothing on throughput vs 128-dim — knee still ~2,976 rps
(128-dim was 2,981). The write bottleneck is quorum-commit on the 2-worker leader
pool, not vector size. The vector READ path (feed-profile retrieve — the
db.retrieve(profile) path thepeach E2/R8 calls) stays p99 3-11ms through 1500 rps,
never the bottleneck. Memory is the only dim-sensitive resource (567-751 MiB/pod
at 20k items, ~12x 128-dim) — capacity-plan RAM, not throughput.
Recommended sustained target: <=1,000 signal-ingest rps (~1,200 full mix) — 40% of
knee, 2.5x headroom, survives single-node failover, write p99 ~45ms within SLA.
Also: fixed the stale "deployed schema is 128" note in tidal-stress (now reflects
the configurable width). Full writeup: docs/ops/benchmark-1536-peach.md.
Deploying the m11-44b768b image (p6 sharding + p7 mTLS + p8 ops + p9 correctness)
surfaced two blockers; both fixed here.
1. statefulset.yaml: the m11p7 change made the :9500 HTTP plane serve TLS, but the
startup/liveness/readiness probes still used scheme HTTP — kubelet got a TLS
handshake back ("malformed HTTP response \x15\x03\x03") and pods never went
Ready. Set scheme: HTTPS on all three probes (kubelet skips cert verification
for httpGet probes, so the cert's DNS-only SANs are fine). Image pinned to the
m11-44b768b amd64 digest.
2. tidal-stress: the generator's reqwest client did default cert verification and
had no way to trust the cluster's private CA, so https:// targets failed. Added
--ca-cert <pem> (verified TLS against the mounted tidaldb-cluster-tls ca.crt)
and --insecure (skip verification, escape hatch). New StressError::CaCert for
the PEM read fault.
stress-job-m11p6-baseline.yaml: T2-A-equivalent quorum-write throughput run on the
new stack — https:// targets, ca.crt mounted from the tidaldb-cluster-tls Secret,
--ca-cert verified TLS. Drops the removed --write-path flag (m11p6 unified the
write path to hash-routing).
End the "replicated XOR sharded" split: S shard groups, each a
replication group at RF with its own elected leader, leaders balanced
across nodes; any gateway hash-routes.
- One unified write surface: /items,/embeddings,/signals hash-route to
the owning shard group's leader (ShardRouter FNV-1a) AND replicate at
RF. x-tidal-ack/x-tidal-seq, quorum await, NotLeader/QuorumTimeout are
per-group; NotLeader names the group.
- Rebalance verbs (L3): POST /cluster/shards/{id}/transfer (fenced
leadership move) + /cluster/shards/{id}/replicas (add/remove replica).
A ?shard= selector threads through every per-shard admin verb and is
propagated on intra-group forwards (ShardReplica::admin_path). S=1 is
byte-for-byte (no selector, no shard in NotLeader body).
- Tier-3 exit gate (cluster_sharding.rs): 3 nodes × 3 shards × RF=3 over
real OS processes — SIGKILL a node under ack=quorum load → only its
shard-leaderships re-elect, reads never stop, zero acked loss across
random kill points; plus a rebalance-verb test. Harness:
MultiProcCluster::start_sharded.
- tidal-stress drives the single path (WritePath::Leader|Sharded gone),
spreading writes round-robin across gateways or pinning --leader-url.
- Throughput: local 3×3 sustains 3,000 quorum signal-writes/s @ 0% err,
~30% CPU, lag ~0 (generator-bound). ≥5,000/s + ≥2.5× scaling is Ref-A.
Known follow-up (tracked): per-group-aware node readiness and cross-node
read fan-out under PARTIAL placement.
ack=quorum gates replicated writes on a majority of the replica set durably
holding them: followers push their durably-applied frontier (ReportApplied,
once per apply round, decoupled from ship acks), the leader folds frontier
reports + ship-ack hints + heal resumes into a leadership-scoped CommitIndex
(k-th-largest durable mark), and handlers await it through an async
watch-channel bridge (zero parked threads per waiter). Honest timeouts:
retryable 503 naming the laggards; x-tidal-seq on every cluster write.
Follower blob applies are batched under group-commit fsyncs (22x seeding).
Exit gate: 167/167 leader-SIGKILL kill points, zero acked-write loss.
Seven-dimension review pass (all confirmed findings fixed):
- WAL blob drain now ABORTS on the first write failure instead of reusing
the failed seqno mid-drain (a torn record buried mid-segment would
truncate every later acked record on replay)
- apply_replicated_blobs waits every staged append even after a mid-batch
failure, parses metadata once, and moves records into Arcs shared with
the WAL writer (no deep clone per record on the follower apply path)
- CommitIndex: zero-peer fast path now respects demotion (active checked
under lock before the single-replica return), k-th-largest uses
select_nth over a reused scratch buffer
- await_quorum: re-reads the index once after the deadline fires (no false
503 for a write that committed in the race window), warns when the
commit-watch bridge dies outside shutdown, zero-peer path checks active
- notify_applied report failures: WARN on the first failure of a streak,
INFO on recovery (a silently stalling frontier reads as unexplained
quorum 503s); receiver skips re-notifying unadvanced frontiers
- x-tidal-deduplicated: 1 marks dedup-suppressed signal writes (relayed
through forwards) so durability cursors can tell dedup from no-seqno
- docs: 167/167 kill-point record corrected in CHANGELOG; rolling-upgrade
order (leader first — a pre-m11p3 leader silently downgrades quorum
requests to leader-ack) in CHANGELOG + runbook §8; monitoring note for
report-loss diagnosis on the quorum-timeout alert
Verified: workspace clippy -D warnings (incl. cluster-e2e targets), full
tidaldb/tidal-net/tidal-server/tidalctl suites green, tier-3 multi-process
quorum suite green (8/8 kill points, zero acked loss, partition gate/recover).
New workspace crate: an open-loop, coordinated-omission-corrected HTTP load
generator + capacity ramp for the standalone and multi-process cluster surfaces,
modeling a thepeach feed session (feed reads + view/like/skip signals + search,
signal-dominated per their user-graph spec). Throttleable target rate, ramp
presets (smoke/quick/peach-100k/max) or rps:secs specs, peach/reads/writes/custom
mixes, leader vs sharded write paths, per-op p50/p90/p99/p999/max latency, a
backpressure-aware status breakdown (429/408/503/4xx/5xx/transport), and a verdict
translated to supported DAU. Runs in-cluster as a k8s Job (tidal-stress/k8s/).
Open-loop scheduler (scheduler.rs) fires at a fixed arrival rate and measures
latency from each request's intended send time, so a server stall inflates the
percentiles a closed-loop test hides; it shed-and-counts rather than blocking when
the in-flight cap is reached. Pure-Rust (tokio + reqwest/rustls), no engine deps.
Findings on the live 3-region k3s cluster (docs/ops/stress-test-thepeach.md):
reads scale to thousands/s at <15ms p99; the replicated /signals path saturates at
~90 signals/s (single-leader funnel + 2-worker write pool + synchronous gRPC ship);
the sharded path sustains 3,669 signals/s at 0 errors and ~27% cluster CPU (≈ the
100k-DAU peak, knee not reached). Overload degrades gracefully (429; 0 pod
restarts). thepeach's planned in-process embedding sidesteps all of it (write ≈82ns).
