The need for the Couchbase administrative interface

Couchbase has been designed to make the life of an administrator easy. As seen in the previous chapter, it can be installed with a few clicks, and most of the administrative tasks that are required for running and configuring clusters are managed by the Couchbase server itself. In fact, Couchbase provides very minimal configuration options to bring the cluster up and running, and the majority of these configurations can be performed through a very user-friendly user interface. In most cases, the administrator does not have to make any changes in configuration, unless required.

However, in any system, some operational tasks and maintenance are required to be performed for smooth operation and to keep the system healthy. For instance, when the load on the cluster increases, we can expand it by adding nodes to increase the memory and improve the disk I/O performance. Couchbase provides a mechanism to expand the cluster size when the application load increases, and also to trim the cluster size down during a lean period, instantly without any complication. If there is a need to increase the memory, then with a few clicks, the administrator can add servers to the cluster, and remove them easily whenever there is no load on the cluster. Sometimes, a particular node in the cluster holds more data than that of average nodes in the cluster, then it needs to distribute the data across the cluster evenly to balance load, which in turns improve performance. This process is called rebalancing. The rebalancing process can be performed online, while the cluster is serving the regular data requests.

Although buckets can be created from the client Software Development Kit (SDK) using various APIs, sometimes the administrator needs to create them and view the documents stored in the bucket manually. Moreover, administrators need to monitor the health of the Couchbase cluster and take measures depending on various parameters to provide optimal performance. Since, a Couchbase cluster usually consists of multiple nodes, there is a high chance of intermittent node failure. When a node in a cluster fails for different reasons, such as when hardware or software corruption occurred, the administrator should be able to determine the failed node and the reason for it's failure. Although Couchbase is designed to manage itself, such as automated failover of nodes, the cluster can be configured to control failure manually. When a cluster node fails, Couchbase ensures that passive replicas are moved to active replicas for those documents that were active in the failed nodes in the other data nodes of the cluster.

Note

Clusters can have issues such as performance, low disk space when there is high fragmentation of a bucket, and so on. Monitoring such issues and fine-tuning to resolve them can be done through the admin UI.

Moreover, administrators need to perform regular backups to prevent data loss or for disaster recovery. Although Couchbase replicates data across the nodes within a cluster, it is a good practice to take a backup of data on a regular basis for statuary compliance and recovery when disasters strike. Such tasks and maintenance can be performed using the aforementioned tools.