Mission-critical systems use high availability clusters. They make systems resilient and robust, adding redundancy and scalability. Because of this, they're perfect for managing blockchain services.
Despite their potential benefits, node clusters can struggle with distributed systems. Maintaining synchronicity across the entire cluster is far from trivial. As the leading blockchain infrastructure provider, Blockdaemon understands these technical challenges. We know blockchain better than anyone. We also know the benefits that node clusters can bring to our customers. Fortunately, we have been able to solve the challenges with our dedicated clusters. Blockdaemon clusters give you a robust, scalable and consistent blockchain service.
What are Node Clusters?
Node clusters are groups of computers that provide a resilient, consistent service. These clusters can quickly add redundant machines to the group. This allows them to handle node failures, rises in demand or other unforeseen circumstances with ease.
Equally, node clusters can quickly release machines if demand falls. In a centralized system, high availability systems share a central database. This keeps all of the individual machines aligned. A blockchain ledger is less predictable, at least in the short term. Keeping your nodes in sync with the network is a technical challenge. To understand how clusters can help blockchain services, we need to understand the challenges of blockchain architecture.
3 Main Challenges When Deploying and Maintaining Blockchain Architecture
A business’s first forays into blockchain are usually on a small scale, with a manageable number of nodes. A few nodes don’t take too much maintenance effort away from core development activities. However, as a business’s distributed applications and services start to grow, so too does the overhead. All of a sudden, managing a large number of nodes isn’t so easy. The more nodes you add, the bigger these problems become:
Challenge 1. Maintaining Your Node Health
Nodes, just like any other machine, can fall over for several reasons. In fact, due to their constant and consistent high use, nodes are often more likely to fall over than traditional centralized servers.You may have experienced some of the following:
- Node crashes due to load spikes
- Nefarious action (hacking)
- Software crashes
- Component failure
- Human error
Even the most bulletproof setup has weaknesses. So, what would happen if your node infrastructure did fail? You could see a loss of revenue or users. Then there’s the hassle of putting things right. A sustained outage has intrinsic issues, and could lead to severe financial implications. To compound the impact, you might not realize you’re offline until it's too late.
Challenge 2. Scaling Your Infrastructure
In addition to resilience, your blockchain solution needs to be dynamic. Blockchain is an ever-expanding area. There’s higher usage than ever and new protocols are being added regularly. Your infrastructure needs to scale quickly, to meet demand. Adding, configuring, and aligning new nodes is time-consuming and requires ensuring that each new node's ledger matches its peers.
Whenever you add a new node, it needs to be in sync with the network. You need to ensure the new node’s ledger matches with peers on the blockchain. This could take minutes, or it could take hours, depending on protocol and method of synchronization. A delay of this size could impact your ability to scale in time. You would not have the necessary services to meet load requirements.
Challenge 3. Maintaining Consistency Across Your Nodes
At any given time, blockchain nodes are ‘non-synchronized’.
That is, nodes on the same blockchain might have slightly different versions of the ledger. This is expected behavior. It’s a byproduct of distributed, independent nodes working together to come to a consensus. Additionally, within a network, there can be different node versions and forks to contend with.These variations can be a challenge to the applications and services built on top of distributed networks. Inconsistent query results and failed transactions can occur when querying a cluster of servers that are not in sync. This will ultimately lead to a poor customer experience. It is critical that all nodes within a cluster are synchronized with each other. You need consistent results when servicing calls and queries.
Node Clusters Provide a Potential Solution
When implemented correctly, high-availability node clusters address all of the challenges above.
But it’s not as simple as that.
Web 2.0 has enabled easily configurable, high availability services for most applications. But bringing this level of reliability and scalability is more challenging within a decentralized environment. Standard high availability approaches can’t handle distributed systems.
Web 2.0 servers generally rely on a cluster of databases under control by a centralized party. In these systems, high availability tasks are straightforward. Synchronization, keepalives, and convergence are easy when you have full visibility and control across all system components.
In a distributed environment things are different. There is no central position like a database. The data across nodes can be unsynchronized until consensus is achieved. Even then, consensus takes time to truly solidify.
Standard clusters can’t:
- Ensure your nodes are healthy
- Ensure all your nodes are in sync with each other, and the network
- Enable rapid demand-based scaling, up or down
These challenges create a much greater technical problem than with normal high availability clusters. They also require a higher level of monitoring and synchronization within the cluster.
Blockdaemon’s Node Clusters Solve This Problem
Blockdaemon’s high-availability node clusters are designed specifically for distributed systems.
Blockdaemon is the leading blockchain infrastructure provider, offering industry-leading node management services since 2017. We have leveraged our expertise to implement high-availability clusters for distributed systems. You don’t have to worry about maintaining node infrastructure.
So, why choose Blockdaemon’s node clusters?
1. Prevent Service Failures
As with most issues in life, you can’t control everything. Blockdaemon’s clusters have redundant nodes for high availability. This provides consistent and resilient service for your apps or services.
2. Enable Rapid and Easy Scaling
Blockdaemon’s node clusters support horizontal scaling. That is, adding new nodes, rather than increasing the power in current nodes (vertical scaling). Horizontal scaling ensures healthy, synced nodes are always available when needed.
3. Essential Node Tools And Utilities
Blockdaemon has a rich suite of tools and utilities to ensure nodes are healthy and all working off the latest block.
Consistent Blockchain Service: Why You Need High-Availability Node Clusters
If blockchain services are critical for your business, you need a bulletproof solution. You need a consistent service. You can’t afford failures. High-availability clusters provide resilient and robust solutions. They’re used in critical systems, adding redundancy and scalability. Unfortunately, standard high-availability clusters are not suitable for blockchain services.
Node Clusters are Essential for Institutional Blockchain Operators
Blockdaemon’s clusters have been developed specifically for blockchain networks. We provide all of the benefits of high-availability clusters, without the drawbacks.You can depend on Blockdaemon’s node clusters to:
- Improve service consistency and availability
- Reliable access across all supported protocols
- Support easy and rapid scaling across all protocols
Blockdaemon operates thousands of nodes across 70+ blockchain protocols. When it comes to blockchain infrastructure, nobody has more experience. Blockdaemon’s node clusters are backed by our security-first approach. This includes our 99.9% uptime guarantee and ISO 27001 certification. Contact us today. Speak to one of our experts. Simplify your blockchain services.
