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topology-guide, grpc_streams (SUPERSEDED note), the frame-size known-issue (retired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