Why so many different ways to start a ArangoDB

Question

I am evaluation ArangoDB and figured there are at least 3 ways to start the DB.

1. arangosh
2. arangod
3. arangodb
4. arangocli - this one would fall into a different category

This is all very confusing, can someone provide visibility about the different options and what is the best way to start the engine.

Thank you

Answer 1

These are not different ways to start Arango. These are different tools that can be used with Arango

arangosh is a shell tool that an be used to administer the DB as well as running ad-hoc queries. It does not start a server, it only starts the shell that connects to a server

arangod : This is the deamon that runs when you start Arangodb. In fact, to start the server you usually run (at least on Mac) /usr/local/Cellar/arangodb/3.4.0/sbin/arangod

arangodb : This is the db install package. For example, in the Mac you would run brew install arangodb to install arangodb on your machine

arangocli: This is simply a cli tool to run ad-hoc queries.

Answer 2

arangod starts a single ArangoDB server, which is sufficient to run a Single Instance deployment. To run more complex deployments (eg Cluster, Active Failover) multiple arangod processes are required.

For example a Cluster with 3 agents, 2 dbservers and 2 coordinators requires 8 arangod processes in total. More can be found in the Cluster - Manual Start documentation.

In order to simplify the deployment it is recommended to use the arangodb starter tool. The execution of arangodb initializes an arangod process for each dbserver, coordinator and agent. Eg using arangodb --starter.local to start a local 3 node cluster starts 9 arangod processes internally: 3 dbservers, 3 coordinators and 3 agents. The running arangod processes can be checked with ps auxw | grep arangod ps auxw | grep arangod .

An exemplary output can be seen below:

ps auxw | grep arangod
max       8099  1.9  0.1 114712  8736 pts/0    Sl+  14:47   0:00 arangodb --starter.local
max       8118  3.9  2.5 635016 203736 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:00 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/agent8551/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/agent8551/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/agent8551/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/agent8551/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --agency.activate true --agency.my-address tcp://localhost:8551 --agency.size 3 --agency.supervision true --foxx.queues false --server.statistics false --agency.endpoint tcp://localhost:8531 --agency.endpoint tcp://localhost:8541
max       8165 10.5  2.6 676548 215908 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:01 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/agent8531/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/agent8531/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/agent8531/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/agent8531/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --agency.activate true --agency.my-address tcp://localhost:8531 --agency.size 3 --agency.supervision true --foxx.queues false --server.statistics false --agency.endpoint tcp://localhost:8541 --agency.endpoint tcp://localhost:8551
max       8168  5.4  2.6 705236 216828 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:00 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/dbserver8550/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/dbserver8550/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/dbserver8550/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/dbserver8550/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --cluster.my-address tcp://localhost:8550 --cluster.my-role PRIMARY --foxx.queues false --server.statistics true --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8531 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8541 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8551
max       8171  4.8  2.5 641160 204968 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:00 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/agent8541/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/agent8541/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/agent8541/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/agent8541/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --agency.activate true --agency.my-address tcp://localhost:8541 --agency.size 3 --agency.supervision true --foxx.queues false --server.statistics false --agency.endpoint tcp://localhost:8531 --agency.endpoint tcp://localhost:8551
max       8302  6.4  2.6 696532 216668 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:00 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/dbserver8530/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/dbserver8530/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/dbserver8530/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/dbserver8530/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --cluster.my-address tcp://localhost:8530 --cluster.my-role PRIMARY --foxx.queues false --server.statistics true --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8531 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8541 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8551
max       8304 26.7  2.4 744684 199052 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:02 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/coordinator8549/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/coordinator8549/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/coordinator8549/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-2/coordinator8549/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --cluster.my-address tcp://localhost:8549 --cluster.my-role COORDINATOR --foxx.queues true --server.statistics true --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8531 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8541 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8551
max       8306  5.8  2.6 711380 215200 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:00 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/dbserver8540/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/dbserver8540/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/dbserver8540/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/dbserver8540/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --cluster.my-address tcp://localhost:8540 --cluster.my-role PRIMARY --foxx.queues false --server.statistics true --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8531 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8541 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8551
max       8318 27.5  2.5 760064 202456 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:02 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/coordinator8529/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/coordinator8529/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/coordinator8529/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/coordinator8529/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --cluster.my-address tcp://localhost:8529 --cluster.my-role COORDINATOR --foxx.queues true --server.statistics true --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8531 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8541 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8551
max       8321 32.8  2.5 764160 202212 pts/0   Sl+  14:47   0:02 /usr/sbin/arangod -c /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/coordinator8539/arangod.conf --database.directory /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/coordinator8539/data --javascript.startup-directory /usr/share/arangodb3/js --javascript.app-path /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/coordinator8539/apps --log.file /home/max/Documents/starter/test/local-slave-1/coordinator8539/arangod.log --log.force-direct false --javascript.copy-installation true --cluster.my-address tcp://localhost:8539 --cluster.my-role COORDINATOR --foxx.queues true --server.statistics true --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8531 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8541 --cluster.agency-endpoint tcp://localhost:8551

When specifying an option with the starter arangodb as --server.storage-engine rocksdb , this option is passed to all the starter's arangod processes.

A detailed overview for various deployment modes can be found in the documentation's Deployment chapter.