node-red-contrib-cpu-cluster

Run Node-RED on all your CPU cores

Description

The Node-RED framework runs on Node.js®, which by default runs in a single process and which uses a single cpu core. This node allows Node-RED to run flows on multiple cores.

Most computers, from the smartphone to the enterprise server, have multiple cores. To take advantage of this, Node.js has a module (called the cluster module) that allows a Node.js program to run on multiple cores.

License

Apache 2.0

Getting Started

Installing

npm i node-red-contrib-cpu-cluster

Overview

The cluster node auto-detects the runtime environment of the Node-RED instance in which it is running. Once a single cluster node is added to a flow, on the next deploy the node will call the Node.js cluster module. The process that was originally running the Node-RED instance becomes the master process, which spawns multiple worker processes.

If all nodes are removed from the active flow, all clustering logic will also be removed, and Node-RED will function as normal.

Terminology

• Cluster: A set of processes running on a single computer instance that can talk to each other using Inter-Process Communication (IPC)

• Worker: A single process in a cluster.

• Master: A single process that acts as the parent to all Worker processes. A Master process can create and stop worker processes.

• Bingo Worker: A single worker process out of all of the worker processes spawned that can be used for single-process tasks. For example, if Node-RED is watching a file, the user may only want to execute a flow once per event, and not have every worker process fire at once.

• Broadcast: Send a message to every worker in the cluster at the same time.

• Round Robin: Cycle through workers one at a time, sending a message to the next worker in order.

Runtime Modes

1. Enable Clustering - The default mode, which enables clustering (running all flows on all processes)
2. Send to Random Worker - Takes a message from the input and sends it to a random worker process.
3. Run On Bingo Process - Only passes the message to the output if the current worker is the bingo worker. Does not allow the message to continue to if the worker is not the bingo worker.
4. Send To Bingo Process - Takes a message from the input and sends it to the bingo worker.
5. Broadcast - Takes the message and sends it to all available workers.
6. RoundRobin - Passes the message to the next worker selected using a round-robin scheduling algorithm.