Building high-scale distributed system using Orbit and the virtual actor model

1. BUILDING HIGH-SCALE DISTRIBUTED
SYSTEMS USING ORBIT AND THE VIRTUAL
ACTOR MODEL
Victor Hurdugaci

2. VICTOR HURDUGACI
• Romanian
• Currently: Electronic Arts, Seattle
• Past: Microsoft (ASP.NET, Azure WebJobs/Functions, X++ compiler)
• Fell asleep and woke up in a different country
• @VictorHurdugaci
• http://victorh.info

3. INTRODUCTION
• Data shipping paradigm
• Frontend: stateless
• Middle-tier: stateless
• Data transfer on every request
• No data locality
Frontend FrontendFrontendFrontendFrontendFrontend
Middle-tierMiddle-tierMiddle-tier
Storage

4. INTRODUCTION
• Data shipping paradigm
• Frontend: stateless
• Middle-tier: stateless
• Data transfer on every request
• No data locality
• No semantic and concurrency
benefits of storage
Frontend FrontendFrontendFrontendFrontendFrontend
Middle-tierMiddle-tierMiddle-tier
Storage
Cache

5. INTRODUCTION
• Function shipping paradigm
• Frontend: stateless
• Middle-tier: stateful
• Performance benefits of cache
• Data locality
• Semantic and concurrency benefits
Frontend FrontendFrontendFrontendFrontendFrontend
Middle-tierMiddle-tierMiddle-tier
Storage
Data Data Data

6. Foo myVar = new Foo()
…
myVar.doSomething(42)

7. DEMO - START

8. VIRTUAL ACTOR
• An actor is a computational entity that, in response to a message it receives, can
concurrently:
• Send a finite number of messages to other actors
• Create a finite number of new actors
• Designate the behavior to be used for the next message it receives (change state)
-- Wikipedia

9. ORBIT
• Virtual actor framework
• OSS
• Java/JVM
• Microsoft Orleans but for JVM

10. ORBIT VIRTUAL ACTORS
• Java classes
• Have an identity (type + string)

11. ORBIT VIRTUAL ACTORS
• Java classes
• Have an identity (type + string)
• “Single threaded”
• Cooperative multitasking
• Async

12. ORBIT VIRTUAL ACTORS
• Java classes
• Have an identity (type + string)
• “Single threaded”
• Cooperative multitasking
• Async
• Perpetual existence
• Actors never fail

13. ACTOR LIFECYCLE
• No explicit (de)activation
• No explicit placement
• Activated: on message
• Deactivated: on timeout because no message

14. ORBIT NODE
Server
Orbit (java) process
Actor Actor Actor
Actor

15. ORBIT CLUSTER
Server
Orbit (java) process
Actor Actor Actor
Actor Actor
Server
Orbit (java) process
Actor Actor Actor
Actor
Server
Orbit (java) process
Actor Actor Actor
Actor Actor
Server
Orbit (java) process
Actor Actor Actor

16. ORBIT MESSAGING
Server
Server
Server
Server

17. ORBIT MESSAGING
Server
Server
Server
Server
Client

18. ORBIT MESSAGING
Server
Server
Server
Server
Client Redis

19. ORBIT MESSAGING
Server
Server
Server
Server
Client Redis

20. ORBIT MESSAGING
Server
Server
Server
Server
Client
Redis
Actor
directory
Node
directory
Messaging

21. ORBIT MESSAGING
Server
Server
Server
Server
Client
Actor
directory
Node
directory
Messaging
Node
directory
Actor
directory
Actor
directory
Actor
directory
MessagingMessagingMessagingMessagingMessagingMessaging
Messaging

22. HOST ⇒ CLIENT, CLIENT ⇏ HOST
Server/Client
Server/Client
Server/Client
Server/Client
Actor
directory
Node
directory
Messaging
Node
directory
Actor
directory
Actor
directory
Actor
directory
MessagingMessagingMessagingMessagingMessagingMessaging
Messaging
Client

23. EVENTUAL CONSISTENCY
• No failure = single activation guarantee
• Failure = single activation eventual guarantee
• Two activations in two different partitions
• One is eventually dropped
• Availability over consistency

24. DEMO – ORBIT

25. PERSISTENCE
• Actor state
• No out-of-the-box solution
• No checkpoint enforcement
• 100% application controlled
• Persistence hooks

26. PERSISTENCE
Server/Client
Server/Client
Server/Client
Server/Client
Actor
directory
Node
directory
Messaging
Node
directory
Actor
directory
Actor
directory
Actor
directory
MessagingMessagingMessagingMessagingMessagingMessaging
Messaging
Client

27. PERSISTENCE
Server/Client
Server/Client
Server/Client
Server/Client
Actor
directory
Node
directory
Messaging
Node
directory
Actor
directory
Actor
directory
Actor
directory
MessagingMessagingMessagingMessagingMessagingMessaging
Messaging
Client Storage
Storage
Storage

28. DEMO – ORBIT (PERSISTENCE)

29. PERFORMANCE CONSIDERATIONS
• Small messages, billions of actors
• Actor state size
• Actor state load time
• CPU
• Message size

30. NO FREE LUNCH
• Batch operations
• Mix of short and long running operations
• Cross-actor transactions

31. THANK YOU!
• Orbit: https://github.com/orbit/orbit
• Orleans: https://github.com/dotnet/orleans
• http://victorh.info
• @victorhurdugaci