Local dev 5 node service fabric, with 2 frontend and 3 backend nodes

Question

I'd like to configure my Service Fabric installation with 2 frontend and 3 backend nodes, so I can more closely replicate my production environment.

I've followed the steps in this post:

Azure Service Fabric nodes, node types, instances and scale sets

But it seems that the config has changed a bit since this was written. If I edit the config anyway I get the error:

Dev Cluster size 2 is not supported. Size should be either 1 or 5.

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to have a local 5 node cluster with 2 frontend and 3 backend nodes?

Answer 1

From the docs:

When developing applications, you often find yourself doing quick iterations of writing code, debugging, changing code, and debugging. To help optimize this process, the local cluster can run in two modes: one-node or five-node. Both cluster modes have their benefits. Five-node cluster mode enables you to work with a real cluster. You can test failover scenarios, work with more instances and replicas of your services. One-node cluster mode is optimized to do quick deployment and registration of services, to help you quickly validate code using the Service Fabric runtime.

So, for the dev cluster, you can't use 2 node types.

For the production cluster, you can have 2 node types. However, for production workloads, you should run at least 5 primary nodes, for failover and DR purposes.

What you can do is use placement constraints to designate frontend and backend services. Please keep in mind that this restricts options for SF to balance workloads.