Aerospike Shared-Memory Tool (ASMT)

The Aerospike Shared-Memory Tool (ASMT) backs up and restores Aerospike shared memory segments to disk, enabling warm restart across reboots in an Aerospike Database Enterprise Edition (EE) cluster. The tool backs up primary indexes, secondary indexes, and data stages from the server node (host machine) memory to the file system. After the backup, the server node can reboot without the time-consuming stage of rebuilding the indexes.

Note

This tool is not intended for namespaces where the primary index is configured on Persistent Memory or Flash (SSDs), as those would persist upon an instance restart.

Warm restart with asmt

Follow the steps below to perform a warm restart of an Aerospike Database cluster node when regular maintenance or a server reboot are required:

1. Cleanly shut down the Aerospike cluster node process (asd).
2. Use asmt to copy the node’s primary index from shared memory to the local file system.
3. Perform any required maintenance on the server, rebooting or power cycling when finished.
4. After the server restarts, use asmt to restore the primary index from the file system to shared memory.
5. Start asd, which will warmstart the node because the primary index is in shared memory.

The alternative – a cold restart – is a much longer process because it requires the Aerospike cluster node to scan all storage devices to reconstruct the primary index.

Caution

You cannot use ASMT while asd is running.

Refer to the following knowledge base articles:

• FAQ - ASMT Tool
• How to speed up cold start