Every AttributeValueChanged/AlarmStateChanged rode its own gRPC message on
SiteStreamService; at target scale that is ~37.5k messages/s/site of pure
framing overhead. Coalesce them, additively, with no new RPC.
Wire (sitestream.proto, regenerated via docker/regen-proto.sh sitestream):
InstanceStreamRequest.batching_supported = 3
SiteStreamRequest.batching_supported = 2
SiteStreamEvent.batch = 4 (new oneof case)
SiteStreamEventBatch { repeated SiteStreamEvent events = 1 }
The proto3 default of batching_supported IS the negotiation, and it is
load-bearing: a batch frame reaches a pre-R2 central as EventOneofCase.None,
whose ConvertToDomainEvent returns null — the whole batch would vanish with
no error anywhere. An old central cannot set the flag so it never receives
one; an old site ignores the unknown request field and keeps sending
per-event frames, which the new client's ForEachEvent handles as the
single-event case. Both skew directions are covered by tests that go through
a real proto serialize/parse round-trip.
Server: SiteStreamEventBatcher, a per-subscriber pump replacing the handler's
await-foreach/WriteAsync loop and byte-identical to it at a cap of 1. It
never delays a lone event — it drains the already-queued backlog for free and
lingers only once a backlog is proven — emits a single-event buffer as a
plain frame, preserves order and per-event Timestamps exactly, and flushes
what is buffered when the send channel's writer completes. It sits DOWNSTREAM
of StreamRelayActor's bounded DropOldest channel, so it changes framing only
and does not move the burst ceiling (deferred register row 31, which lives in
the shared publish stage upstream of the BroadcastHub).
Client: sets the flag on both subscriptions and unpacks in order into the
existing per-event pipeline, so SiteAlarmAggregatorActor,
DebugStreamBridgeActor, consumer-keepalive/orphan logic,
reconnect-on-graceful-completion, generation fencing, the (siteId, endpoint)
factory key and IsLive semantics are untouched.
Options (validated): GrpcStreamBatchMaxEvents 100 (1 disables),
GrpcStreamBatchWindow 25 ms — validated strictly under 250 ms, the load
test's end-to-end P99 threshold. Measured worst case (trickle-with-backlog,
window-bound rather than cap-bound): P50 13.8 ms, P99 25.4 ms, max 25.8 ms;
cap-bound case sent 600 queued events in 6 frames.
Telemetry: histogram scadabridge.site.stream.batch_size tagged by stream
kind, recorded only on negotiated streams (per-event otherwise). It rides
ScadaBridgeTelemetry.MeterName, already in the ObservedMeters allowlist.
Docs: Component-Communication.md gains an Event Batching section; CLAUDE.md's
gRPC streaming bullet records the wire shape and the negotiation rationale.
ClusterClient→gRPC migration Phase 4 (docs/plans/2026-07-22-clusterclient-to-grpc-plan.md).
Phases 2/3 proved both directions on gRPC; this removes the Akka transport underneath.
Deleted:
- AkkaCentralTransport, AkkaSiteTransport (+ their dedicated tests)
- ISiteClientFactory + DefaultSiteClientFactory; CentralCommunicationActor legacy
ctor + SelectTransport (Host now builds GrpcSiteTransport and injects it)
- ClusterClient creation + both ClusterClientReceptionist.RegisterService calls in
AkkaHostedService; the RegisterCentralClient message + receive block
- CommunicationOptions.CentralContactPoints; the CentralTransport/SiteTransport
coexistence flags; the CentralTransportMode/SiteTransportKind enums
gRPC is now the only site↔central transport (site→central CentralControlService via
GrpcCentralTransport; central→site SiteCommandService via GrpcSiteTransport), both
built unconditionally by the Host. NoOpCentralTransport is the fail-loud null-default
so TestKit command-dispatch suites still construct the site actor without a wired
transport; production always injects GrpcCentralTransport.
Config: CentralGrpcEndpoints is now unconditional — CommunicationOptionsValidator
rejects blank entries (role-agnostic), and StartupValidator requires a Site node to
list >=1 endpoint (fail-fast, mirrors GrpcPsk). Rig configs moved
CentralContactPoints -> CentralGrpcEndpoints (docker x6, docker-env2 x2, Host default,
deploy/wonder-app-vd03). Kept Akka.Cluster.Tools (ClusterSingleton still used).
Tests: build 0/0; Communication.Tests 640, Host.Tests 421 green. Removed the
ClusterClient.Send per-site-routing tests (covered by the transport suites), swapped
the ISiteClientFactory-based ctors to a substitute ISiteCommandTransport, converted
the audit-push integration relay to an in-process bridge transport.
Docs: Component-Communication/Host/StoreAndForward, components/Communication,
topology-guide, grpc_streams (SUPERSEDED note), the frame-size known-issue (retired
amendment), and CLAUDE.md transport decisions.
Not included: the dead IntegrationCallRequest path (#32) is a separate user-owned
behavioral decision — SiteEnvelope routing is transport-agnostic so it still compiles.
Extract the central→site send path in CentralCommunicationActor behind a new
ISiteCommandTransport, selected by ScadaBridge:Communication:SiteTransport
(Akka | Grpc, default Akka — rollback = flip the flag). CommunicationService's
27 commands, SiteCallAuditActor's 2 parked relays and DebugStreamBridgeActor's
subscribe/unsubscribe are untouched; the seam sits below SiteEnvelope.
- AkkaSiteTransport: today's per-site ClusterClient path extracted verbatim
(the _siteClients lookup + ClusterClient.Send with the reply-to sender
preserved, and the "no client ⇒ warn + drop, caller's Ask times out" path).
- GrpcSiteTransport: dials the site SiteCommandService (T1B.1 proto client) via
SiteCommandDtoMapper, PSK + x-scadabridge-site on the channel through
ControlPlaneCredentials, per-command deadlines set EQUAL to today's
CommunicationService Ask timeouts (per-command, not per-group: DeploymentState
query and TriggerSiteFailover use QueryTimeout; the two parked relays map to
QueryTimeout so SiteCallAudit's inner RelayTimeout 10s < 30s ordering holds;
WaitForAttribute keeps its dynamic Timeout + IntegrationTimeout).
- SitePairChannelProvider: per-site A/B channel pair with sticky failover
(flip only on Unavailable — NEVER on DeadlineExceeded, a write/deploy/failover
may have run), background failback probe to the preferred node with 1s→60s
doubling backoff, PSK invalidation on site removal. Fed by the SAME DB refresh
loop (extended to carry GrpcNodeA/GrpcNodeBAddress) — no second poll.
Tests: actor-with-substitute-transport (routing, Ask-reply plumbing, per-site
lifecycle across refreshes), ResolveDeadline pinned to each command's current
Ask timeout, and GrpcSiteTransport/SitePairChannelProvider over dual in-process
TestServers (PSK+header+deadline attached, Unavailable failover + stickiness,
failback to preferred, no-retry-on-DeadlineExceeded). Proto csproj untouched
(no active <Protobuf> item). Full solution builds 0 warnings; Communication.Tests
607 green with Akka default.
Introduce ICentralTransport as the site->central choke point inside
SiteCommunicationActor. The seven site->central sends (notification submit/
status, audit + cached-telemetry ingest, reconcile, health, heartbeat) now
delegate to an injected transport instead of owning ClusterClient.Send inline.
- AkkaCentralTransport: verbatim extraction of today's ClusterClient.Send path,
including the exact sender-forwarding that routes central's reply straight
back to the waiting Ask. Default when no transport is injected -> behaviour
unchanged, existing SiteCommunicationActorTests pass as-is.
- GrpcCentralTransport + CentralChannelProvider: dial CentralControlService with
sticky failover + background failback (1s-doubling-cap-60s), PSK +
x-scadabridge-site via ControlPlaneCredentials, per-call deadlines mirroring
today's Ask timeouts. Cross-node retry ONLY on provably-unsent
connect failures; never on DeadlineExceeded. Heartbeat stays fire-and-forget.
- StaticSitePskProvider: site's single own-key provider (fail-closed).
- CommunicationOptions: CentralTransport flag (default Akka) + CentralGrpcEndpoints
(validator: required when transport=Grpc). Host selects the impl; the
ClusterClient is created only on the Akka path.
Tests: actor-with-fake-transport (7 delegations + fault routing + heartbeat
no-fault), AkkaCentralTransport sender-forwarding, GrpcCentralTransport over
in-process TestServer (failover flip, sticky, failback, PSK+header, deadline,
no-retry-on-deadline), validator. Communication.Tests 371 green, Host.Tests 391
green; the three above-seam suites pass unmodified.
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.
Adds the active-central-node, in-memory, reference-counted per-site live alarm
cache backing the operator Alarm Summary page. No persisted central alarm store
([PERM]) — no EF entity/table/migration/DbSet.
- ISiteAlarmLiveCache (new): singleton seam — Subscribe(siteId, onChanged) ->
IDisposable (ref-counted, linger stop on last-out), GetCurrentAlarms, IsLive.
- SiteAlarmAggregatorActor (new): one per site. Seed-then-stream ordering copied
from DebugStreamBridgeActor — open the site-wide alarm-only gRPC stream first,
buffer live deltas while the snapshot fan-out runs, flush with per-key dedup
(AlarmKey = InstanceUniqueName|AlarmName|SourceReference), then live pass-through
into an in-memory dict. Placeholder rows seeded from the snapshot and never
expected on the stream; a real-alarm delta (distinct key) never wipes them.
NodeA<->NodeB reconnect (retry budget + stability window), reconnect re-seeds,
periodic reconcile (authoritative clear-and-rebuild) corrects instance-set drift,
and a budget-exhausted stream self-heals on the next reconcile tick.
- SiteAlarmLiveCacheService (new): DI singleton facade — viewer reference-counting,
linger-delayed last-out stop (version + TryRemove(ref) race guards), the
snapshot fan-out seed (RequestDebugSnapshotAsync per Enabled instance, capped),
bounded start-retry self-heal on transient start failure, and the immutable
published-snapshot store the page reads. Cache mutated only on the actor thread;
viewer callbacks invoked outside the lock.
- CommunicationOptions: LiveAlarmCacheLinger (30s), LiveAlarmCacheReconcileInterval
(60s), LiveAlarmCacheSeedConcurrency (8), LiveAlarmCacheMaxSubscribersPerSite
(200). Task 6 formalizes eager validation + telemetry.
- DI registration + AkkaHostedService SetActorSystem wiring on the active central node.
- Tests: 14 actor (seed/stream ordering, dedup, native-alarm parity, placeholder
coherence, reconnect re-seed, reconcile replace, self-heal, stop) + 6 service
(shared start, linger stop, resubscribe cancels stop, idempotent dispose, unknown
site, transient-start self-heal). Code-reviewer pass: no persistence, no Critical;
both Important findings addressed.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MtdgwpEeCUn6cUA5f1LMPj
Notify-and-fetch follow-ups:
- PendingDeploymentPurgeActor: a central cluster singleton (not
readiness-gated, best-effort) that sweeps expired PendingDeployment
staging rows on CommunicationOptions.PendingDeploymentPurgeInterval
(default 1h). Modeled on the kpi-history-recorder pattern: self-scheduling
timer, per-tick DI scope -> IDeploymentManagerRepository, continue-on-error.
Wired in AkkaHostedService.RegisterCentralActors (manager + proxy + drain);
resolves the deferred TODO in DeploymentService. Correctness never depends
on it (supersession bounds rows to <=1/instance; the fetch endpoint enforces
the TTL), so it is deliberately absent from RequiredSingletonsHealthCheck.
- SQL Server integration test for StagePendingIfAbsentAsync re-staging an
instance's OWN DeploymentId over an expired row against the real UNIQUE
index on DeploymentId — confirms EF orders DELETE before INSERT in one
SaveChanges (SQLite's constraint timing differs from SQL Server's). Plus
a same-instance supersession variant on real SQL Server.
Tests: 2 TestKit actor tests + 2 SQL Server integration tests (both ran
green against the infra MSSQL container); 235 Communication + 15
PendingDeployment tests pass; Host builds 0 warnings.
Joseph Doherty