Phase 0 of the ClusterClient→gRPC migration
(docs/plans/2026-07-22-clusterclient-to-grpc-plan.md). Standalone hardening: it
closes a gap that exists today and is a precondition for moving command/control
onto gRPC in later phases.
T0.1 — delete the ManagementActor ClusterClientReceptionist registration.
It was built for an out-of-cluster CLI that was never written: the shipped CLI
speaks HTTP Basic to /management, which asks the actor in-process through
ManagementActorHolder. Nothing in the repo ever sent to /user/management. The
actor still runs there; only the cross-boundary advertisement is gone. Six
documents claimed the CLI used ClusterClient — including the CLI's own README
"Architecture Notes" — and are corrected here rather than left to rot.
T0.2 — record, do not port, the dead integration-routing path.
IntegrationCallRequest is unwired at BOTH ends: RouteIntegrationCallAsync has
zero callers anywhere, and RegisterLocalHandler(Integration, …) appears only in
a test, so production always answers "Integration handler not available". It is
excluded from the gRPC contract (28 of 29 commands migrate) rather than
enshrined on an additive-only wire format, and deleting it during a
transport migration would mix a behavioural change into a change whose whole
value is that behaviour is identical. See
docs/known-issues/2026-07-22-integration-call-routing-is-dead-code.md.
T0.3 — preshared-key authentication on SiteStreamService.
The service shipped with no auth at all: plaintext h2c, no interceptor, so
anything that could reach a site node's :8083 could open a live data stream or
read audit rows back via PullAuditEvents/PullSiteCalls. ControlPlaneAuthInterceptor
now gates /sitestream.SiteStreamService/ — modeled on LocalDbSyncAuthInterceptor
(constant-time compare, fail-closed, PermissionDenied) but gating a SET of
service prefixes so phases 1A/1B add services rather than interceptors. LocalDb
sync keeps its own separate key: it authenticates the pair partner, not central,
and collapsing the two would make a site's central-facing key also admit writes
into its database.
Keys are per site (SB-GRPC-PSK-<siteId>), never fleet-wide, so a compromised
site yields only its own. Central attaches them through ControlPlaneCredentials,
which binds CallCredentials to the channel — covering unary and streaming
uniformly, and letting the key resolve asynchronously, which a client
interceptor could not do without blocking. All three central→site channel
creation sites go through it (SiteStreamGrpcClient and both audit pull invokers);
the pull invokers' channel caches are re-keyed by (site, endpoint) because
credentials are per-site and bound to the channel.
Two decisions beyond the plan:
* StartupValidator now requires GrpcPsk on Site nodes. The plan specified only
the runtime gate, but fail-closed with no boot check produces a node that
joins, answers heartbeats and reports healthy while refusing every stream,
audit pull and telemetry ingest — silent and total. Same reasoning as the
existing inbound API-key pepper rule.
* Added Communication:SitePsks as a central-side key map. The plan assumed
central would read the store, seeded via a dev KEK; the docker rig
deliberately boots with no master key, so store-only resolution would leave
it unable to dial its own sites. The store stays primary — it is the only
source that can serve a site added at runtime — with the map covering
key-less hosts and one-off pins. Neither source falling back to
"unauthenticated" is the invariant.
T0.4 — dev keys on both rigs and tests.
34 tests. The seven that matter most exercise a real in-process gRPC stack over
TestServer: the unit tests on either side of the wire would both stay green if
the halves disagreed, and gRPC refuses call credentials on a plaintext channel
by default — the UnsafeUseInsecureChannelCallCredentials opt-in is only provable
by making a real call. They confirm correct key passes on unary AND streaming,
wrong key and no-credentials both get PermissionDenied, and an unresolvable key
fails the call with nothing reaching the service.
OPERATIONAL: a site node upgraded to this build without a key will not boot.
That includes the gitignored deploy/wonder-app-vd03/ overlay.
Every node now lists ITSELF as seed-nodes[0] and its partner second. Akka runs
FirstSeedNodeProcess -- the only bootstrap path that can form a NEW cluster when
no peer answers InitJoin -- exclusively for seed-nodes[0]; every other node runs
JoinSeedNodeProcess and retries InitJoin forever. That is why a lone cold-starting
central-b never came Up (the "registered outage gap"), and self-first ordering
closes it using Akka's own protocol.
- 6 node appsettings swapped (the *-node-b configs; the -a nodes were already
self-first). All 14 shipped node configs now satisfy the invariant.
- StartupValidator enforces it at boot, comparing host AND port -- the invariant
fails silently when broken, so it is enforced loudly. NOTE: the gitignored
deploy/wonder-app-vd03/ overlay must be reordered before its next deploy or
that node will refuse to boot.
- SelfFirstSeedBootstrapTests: real in-process clusters at production
failure-detection timings, incl. a falsifiability control proving the OLD
peer-first ordering never forms.
Rejected alternative (implemented, measured, discarded): an external self-form
timer calling Cluster.Join(SelfAddress) after a window. It sits outside Akka's
join handshake and so cannot tell "no seed answered" from "a seed answered and
the join is in flight". On a routine standby restart the peer is alive but the
join stalls behind removal of the node's own stale incarnation; a Join(self)
during TryingToJoin abandons the in-flight join and forms a second cluster at
the same address -- still split after 90s. Docs that claimed self-first ordering
was unsafe for simultaneous cold start are corrected: while mutually reachable
the InitJoin handshake converges them to one cluster (measured).
Two-node keep-oldest could NEVER survive a crash of the oldest/active node:
Akka.NET 1.5.62 KeepOldest.OldestDecision only lets down-if-alone rescue a
side with >= 2 members, so the 1-vs-1 survivor takes DownReachable and downs
ITSELF — proven live on the rig ('SBR took decision ... including myself')
before this change. static-quorum(1) is worse (IsTooManyMembers -> DownAll);
keep-majority just re-keys the fatal crash to the lowest address.
SplitBrainResolverStrategy gains 'auto-down' (new default): BuildHocon emits
Akka's AutoDowning provider with auto-down-unreachable-after = StableAfter.
The leader among the REACHABLE members downs the unreachable peer, so the
survivor takes over singletons and /health/active in ~25s regardless of which
node died. Accepted trade (explicit owner decision): a real network partition
runs dual-active until an operator restarts one side. keep-oldest remains
supported; DownIfAlone validation is now scoped to it.
Live drill on the rebuilt rig: active-crash TAKEOVER in 28s (victim still
down; all 7 singletons Younger->Oldest), standby-crash removal 27s with 0
routing blips; victims rejoin as standby in 2s. New real-cluster tests pin
both directions (SbrFailoverTests.AutoDown_*); TwoNodeClusterFixture gains a
strategy knob. All 16 appsettings flipped (src, docker, docker-env2, and the
gitignored wonder-app-vd03 overlay on disk — owner must sync to the host).
Docs: decision record docs/plans/2026-07-21-auto-down-availability-decision.md,
Component-ClusterInfrastructure downing section rewritten, drill + README
reworked (active mode now asserts takeover), deferred-work SBR row resolved.
MaxBatchSize 500 -> 16. The default is a ROW count, not a byte budget, so the
batch size in bytes is set by the widest replicated column — config_json, which
Task 1 measured at up to ~60-70 KB in production. 70 KB x 500 is ~35 MB against
gRPC's 4 MB default receive limit; 16 keeps a worst-case batch near 1.1 MB.
MaxOplogRows 1,000,000 -> 250,000 and MaxOplogAge 7d -> 2d, sized from the
soak's 0.80 sf_messages rows/sec (~69k rows/day). Tighter than default is
correct here because exceeding a cap is not data loss: the oplog prunes to the
ceiling and sets needs_snapshot, so the peer catches up by snapshot resync
instead of incrementally. That trades a rare full resync for a bounded file.
site-b and site-c stay unreplicated, so the default-OFF posture is still proven
side by side on one rig.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BL2Vu1ESDQ9SCN4gVKkdts
LocalDb Phase 2 deleted the bespoke replicators, so three config keys changed
meaning or died outright:
- ScadaBridge:StoreAndForward:ReplicationEnabled is fully dead. Deleted the
property, its 10 config entries, and the 5 test references.
- SqliteDbPath / SiteDbPath are now migration-only: they name the legacy files
SiteLocalDbLegacyMigrator drains at boot, not live databases. Both mandatory
rules are relaxed accordingly (StartupValidator's Site-only Require, and the
S&F validator's non-empty rule) — an absent value now means "nothing to
migrate", so an already-migrated node can drop the key. DatabaseOptions-
Validator still rejects a present-but-blank value.
- SiteRuntime:ConfigFetchRetryCount's only reader was SiteReplicationActor.
Deleted with its validator rule.
The two path keys stay present in every config, now with a comment explaining
why: removing them would strand un-migrated data on a node that has not yet
started once.
Both relaxations are pinned by the inverse of the test they replace
(Site_MissingSiteDbPath_IsAccepted..., EmptySqliteDbPath_IsAccepted...), each
verified to fail with the old rule restored.
Note: deploy/wonder-app-vd03/appsettings.Site.json is under a gitignored
deploy/ tree, so its edit is local-only and must be repeated on the box.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BL2Vu1ESDQ9SCN4gVKkdts
Task 11. site-a-a is the initiator (dials scadabridge-site-a-b:8083, the
existing site gRPC h2c listener - no new port); site-a-b is passive. Both carry
the SAME dev ApiKey, which is load-bearing: LocalDbSyncAuthInterceptor is
fail-closed, so a mismatch does not degrade to unauthenticated replication, it
rejects every stream and the pair silently stops converging.
site-b and site-c stay unreplicated on purpose, so the default-OFF posture is
proven side-by-side on one rig rather than asserted.
Plain dev key matches the rig's existing posture; production uses a
${secret:...} reference through the pre-host expander. Noted in both files.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BL2Vu1ESDQ9SCN4gVKkdts
Task 3. Site nodes now open one ZB.MOM.WW.LocalDb-managed database holding
OperationTracking and site_events as replicated tables.
SiteLocalDbSetup.OnReady applies both schemas and then RegisterReplicated's them.
That order is load-bearing and easy to get silently wrong: capture is
trigger-based CDC, so rows written before registration are never captured or
snapshotted - they would be invisible to the peer forever, with no error anywhere.
Storage ships UNCONDITIONALLY, no feature flag. With no peer configured LocalDb is
just a local SQLite file, so this is behaviour-equivalent to what site nodes do
today. Replication is opt-in and lands in Program.cs (Task 7), which owns the gRPC
host the sync endpoint needs.
Config: LocalDb:Path added to all EIGHT site-node appsettings (the plan said six -
docker-env2's site-x pair exists too), plus the dev template and the wonder-app-vd03
production sample. All ten are required, not optional: LocalDbOptions.Path is
validated with ValidateOnStart, so a site node without it fails fast at startup.
That is the desired posture, and it is what caught ActorPathTests - the one Host
fixture that actually starts a host - whose config now sets the path too.
Note the path choice fixes an existing data-loss bug in passing: site-tracking.db
and site_events.db both defaulted to CWD-relative paths (/app/...), outside the
mounted volume, so they were silently lost on every container recreate. The
consolidated database lives on /app/data.
Tests are container-built against the REAL SiteServiceRegistration.Configure, not a
hand-assembled ServiceCollection - this family has shipped three wiring defects that
only a real graph would catch (inert Secrets replicator 0.2.0, singleton deadlock
0.2.2, Secrets.Ui missing IAuditWriter). They assert the library's own view of what
is registered rather than that we called the right method.
Verified (all after the change):
dotnet build ZB.MOM.WW.ScadaBridge.slnx -> 0 Error(s), 0 Warning(s)
Host.Tests -> 294 passed (5 new, red-first)
SiteRuntime.Tests -> 530 passed
CentralUI.Tests -> 925 passed
Commons.Tests -> 684 passed
Communication.Tests -> 312 passed
SiteEventLogging.Tests-> 70 passed
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BL2Vu1ESDQ9SCN4gVKkdts
Adds "NodeName" to the ScadaLink:Node section of each per-node
appsettings:
- central-a, central-b for the two central nodes
- node-a, node-b under each of the three sites (site-a, site-b, site-c)
After this commit + a redeploy, every fresh AuditLog / Notifications /
SiteCalls row gets stamped with the originating node's role name via
INodeIdentityProvider, satisfying the design's SourceNode invariant
end-to-end.
Switch site host to WebApplicationBuilder with Kestrel HTTP/2 gRPC server,
add GrpcPort/keepalive config, wire SiteStreamManager as ISiteStreamSubscriber,
expose gRPC ports in docker-compose, add site seed script, update all 10
requirement docs + CLAUDE.md + README.md for the new dual-transport architecture.
Central and site clusters now communicate via ClusterClient/
ClusterClientReceptionist instead of direct ActorSelection. Both
CentralCommunicationActor and SiteCommunicationActor are registered
with their cluster's receptionist. Central creates one ClusterClient
per site using NodeA/NodeB contact points from the DB. Sites configure
multiple CentralContactPoints for automatic failover between central
nodes. ISiteClientFactory enables test injection.
Multi-stage Dockerfile with NuGet restore layer caching, per-node appsettings
with Docker hostnames, shared bridge network with infra services, and
build/deploy/teardown scripts. Ports use 90xx block to avoid conflicts.
Joseph Doherty