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# ZooKeeper Administrator's Guide

### A Guide to Deployment and Administration

* [Deployment](#ch_deployment)
    * [System Requirements](#sc_systemReq)
        * [Supported Platforms](#sc_supportedPlatforms)
        * [Required Software](#sc_requiredSoftware)
    * [Clustered (Multi-Server) Setup](#sc_zkMulitServerSetup)
    * [Single Server and Developer Setup](#sc_singleAndDevSetup)
* [Administration](#ch_administration)
    * [Designing a ZooKeeper Deployment](#sc_designing)
        * [Cross Machine Requirements](#sc_CrossMachineRequirements)
        * [Single Machine Requirements](#Single+Machine+Requirements)
    * [Provisioning](#sc_provisioning)
    * [Things to Consider: ZooKeeper Strengths and Limitations](#sc_strengthsAndLimitations)
    * [Administering](#sc_administering)
    * [Maintenance](#sc_maintenance)
        * [Ongoing Data Directory Cleanup](#Ongoing+Data+Directory+Cleanup)
        * [Debug Log Cleanup (log4j)](#Debug+Log+Cleanup+%28log4j%29)
    * [Supervision](#sc_supervision)
    * [Monitoring](#sc_monitoring)
    * [Logging](#sc_logging)
    * [Troubleshooting](#sc_troubleshooting)
    * [Configuration Parameters](#sc_configuration)
        * [Minimum Configuration](#sc_minimumConfiguration)
        * [Advanced Configuration](#sc_advancedConfiguration)
        * [Cluster Options](#sc_clusterOptions)
        * [Encryption, Authentication, Authorization Options](#sc_authOptions)
        * [Experimental Options/Features](#Experimental+Options%2FFeatures)
        * [Unsafe Options](#Unsafe+Options)
        * [Disabling data directory autocreation](#Disabling+data+directory+autocreation)
        * [Enabling db existence validation](#sc_db_existence_validation)
        * [Performance Tuning Options](#sc_performance_options)
        * [AdminServer configuration](#sc_adminserver_config)
    * [Communication using the Netty framework](#Communication+using+the+Netty+framework)
        * [Quorum TLS](#Quorum+TLS)
        * [Upgrading existing non-TLS cluster with no downtime](#Upgrading+existing+nonTLS+cluster)
    * [ZooKeeper Commands](#sc_zkCommands)
        * [The Four Letter Words](#sc_4lw)
        * [The AdminServer](#sc_adminserver)
    * [Data File Management](#sc_dataFileManagement)
        * [The Data Directory](#The+Data+Directory)
        * [The Log Directory](#The+Log+Directory)
        * [File Management](#sc_filemanagement)
        * [Recovery - TxnLogToolkit](#Recovery+-+TxnLogToolkit)
    * [Things to Avoid](#sc_commonProblems)
    * [Best Practices](#sc_bestPractices)

<a name="ch_deployment"></a>

## Deployment

This section contains information about deploying Zookeeper and
covers these topics:

* [System Requirements](#sc_systemReq)
* [Clustered (Multi-Server) Setup](#sc_zkMulitServerSetup)
* [Single Server and Developer Setup](#sc_singleAndDevSetup)

The first two sections assume you are interested in installing
ZooKeeper in a production environment such as a datacenter. The final
section covers situations in which you are setting up ZooKeeper on a
limited basis - for evaluation, testing, or development - but not in a
production environment.

<a name="sc_systemReq"></a>

### System Requirements

<a name="sc_supportedPlatforms"></a>

#### Supported Platforms

ZooKeeper consists of multiple components.  Some components are
supported broadly, and other components are supported only on a smaller
set of platforms.

* **Client** is the Java client
  library, used by applications to connect to a ZooKeeper ensemble.
* **Server** is the Java server
  that runs on the ZooKeeper ensemble nodes.
* **Native Client** is a client
  implemented in C, similar to the Java client, used by applications
  to connect to a ZooKeeper ensemble.
* **Contrib** refers to multiple
  optional add-on components.

The following matrix describes the level of support committed for
running each component on different operating system platforms.

##### Support Matrix

| Operating System | Client | Server | Native Client | Contrib |
|------------------|--------|--------|---------------|---------|
| GNU/Linux | Development and Production | Development and Production | Development and Production | Development and Production |
| Solaris | Development and Production | Development and Production | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| FreeBSD | Development and Production | Development and Production | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| Windows | Development and Production | Development and Production | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| Mac OS X | Development Only | Development Only | Not Supported | Not Supported |

For any operating system not explicitly mentioned as supported in
the matrix, components may or may not work.  The ZooKeeper community
will fix obvious bugs that are reported for other platforms, but there
is no full support.

<a name="sc_requiredSoftware"></a>

#### Required Software

ZooKeeper runs in Java, release 1.8 or greater
(JDK 8 LTS, JDK 11 LTS, JDK 12 - Java 9 and 10 are not supported).
It runs as an _ensemble_ of ZooKeeper servers. Three
ZooKeeper servers is the minimum recommended size for an
ensemble, and we also recommend that they run on separate
machines. At Yahoo!, ZooKeeper is usually deployed on
dedicated RHEL boxes, with dual-core processors, 2GB of RAM,
and 80GB IDE hard drives.

<a name="sc_zkMulitServerSetup"></a>

### Clustered (Multi-Server) Setup

For reliable ZooKeeper service, you should deploy ZooKeeper in a
cluster known as an _ensemble_. As long as a majority
of the ensemble are up, the service will be available. Because Zookeeper
requires a majority, it is best to use an
odd number of machines. For example, with four machines ZooKeeper can
only handle the failure of a single machine; if two machines fail, the
remaining two machines do not constitute a majority. However, with five
machines ZooKeeper can handle the failure of two machines.

###### Note
>As mentioned in the
[ZooKeeper Getting Started Guide](zookeeperStarted.html)
, a minimum of three servers are required for a fault tolerant
clustered setup, and it is strongly recommended that you have an
odd number of servers.

>Usually three servers is more than enough for a production
install, but for maximum reliability during maintenance, you may
wish to install five servers. With three servers, if you perform
maintenance on one of them, you are vulnerable to a failure on one
of the other two servers during that maintenance. If you have five
of them running, you can take one down for maintenance, and know
that you're still OK if one of the other four suddenly fails.

>Your redundancy considerations should include all aspects of
your environment. If you have three ZooKeeper servers, but their
network cables are all plugged into the same network switch, then
the failure of that switch will take down your entire ensemble.

Here are the steps to set a server that will be part of an
ensemble. These steps should be performed on every host in the
ensemble:

1. Install the Java JDK. You can use the native packaging system
  for your system, or download the JDK from:
  [http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp](http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp)

2. Set the Java heap size. This is very important to avoid
  swapping, which will seriously degrade ZooKeeper performance. To
  determine the correct value, use load tests, and make sure you are
  well below the usage limit that would cause you to swap. Be
  conservative - use a maximum heap size of 3GB for a 4GB
  machine.

3. Install the ZooKeeper Server Package. It can be downloaded
  from:
  [http://zookeeper.apache.org/releases.html](http://zookeeper.apache.org/releases.html)

4. Create a configuration file. This file can be called anything.
  Use the following settings as a starting point:

        tickTime=2000
        dataDir=/var/lib/zookeeper/
        clientPort=2181
        initLimit=5
        syncLimit=2
        server.1=zoo1:2888:3888
        server.2=zoo2:2888:3888
        server.3=zoo3:2888:3888

     You can find the meanings of these and other configuration
  settings in the section [Configuration Parameters](#sc_configuration). A word
  though about a few here:
  Every machine that is part of the ZooKeeper ensemble should know
  about every other machine in the ensemble. You accomplish this with
  the series of lines of the form **server.id=host:port:port**. 
  (The parameters **host** and **port** are straightforward, for each server 
  you need to specify first a Quorum port then a dedicated port for ZooKeeper leader
  election). Since ZooKeeper 3.6.0 you can also [specify multiple addresses](#id_multi_address) 
  for each ZooKeeper server instance (this can increase availability when multiple physical 
  network interfaces can be used parallel in the cluster).
  You attribute the
  server id to each machine by creating a file named
  *myid*, one for each server, which resides in
  that server's data directory, as specified by the configuration file
  parameter **dataDir**.

5. The myid file
  consists of a single line containing only the text of that machine's
  id. So *myid* of server 1 would contain the text
  "1" and nothing else. The id must be unique within the
  ensemble and should have a value between 1 and 255.
  **IMPORTANT:** if you enable extended features such
   as TTL Nodes (see below) the id must be between 1
   and 254 due to internal limitations.

6. Create an initialization marker file *initialize*
  in the same directory as *myid*. This file indicates
  that an empty data directory is expected. When present, an empty database
  is created and the marker file deleted. When not present, an empty data
  directory will mean this peer will not have voting rights and it will not
  populate the data directory until it communicates with an active leader.
  Intended use is to only create this file when bringing up a new
  ensemble.

7. If your configuration file is set up, you can start a
  ZooKeeper server:  

        $ java -cp zookeeper.jar:lib/*:conf org.apache.zookeeper.server.quorum.QuorumPeerMain zoo.conf

  QuorumPeerMain starts a ZooKeeper server,
  [JMX](http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/core/mntr-mgmt/javamanagement/)
  management beans are also registered which allows
  management through a JMX management console.
  The [ZooKeeper JMX
  document](zookeeperJMX.html) contains details on managing ZooKeeper with JMX.
  See the script _bin/zkServer.sh_,
  which is included in the release, for an example
  of starting server instances.
8. Test your deployment by connecting to the hosts:
  In Java, you can run the following command to execute
  simple operations:

        $ bin/zkCli.sh -server 127.0.0.1:2181

<a name="sc_singleAndDevSetup"></a>

### Single Server and Developer Setup

If you want to setup ZooKeeper for development purposes, you will
probably want to setup a single server instance of ZooKeeper, and then
install either the Java or C client-side libraries and bindings on your
development machine.

The steps to setting up a single server instance are the similar
to the above, except the configuration file is simpler. You can find the
complete instructions in the [Installing and
Running ZooKeeper in Single Server Mode](zookeeperStarted.html#sc_InstallingSingleMode) section of the [ZooKeeper Getting Started
Guide](zookeeperStarted.html).

For information on installing the client side libraries, refer to
the [Bindings](zookeeperProgrammers.html#ch_bindings)
section of the [ZooKeeper
Programmer's Guide](zookeeperProgrammers.html).

<a name="ch_administration"></a>

## Administration

This section contains information about running and maintaining
ZooKeeper and covers these topics:

* [Designing a ZooKeeper Deployment](#sc_designing)
* [Provisioning](#sc_provisioning)
* [Things to Consider: ZooKeeper Strengths and Limitations](#sc_strengthsAndLimitations)
* [Administering](#sc_administering)
* [Maintenance](#sc_maintenance)
* [Supervision](#sc_supervision)
* [Monitoring](#sc_monitoring)
* [Logging](#sc_logging)
* [Troubleshooting](#sc_troubleshooting)
* [Configuration Parameters](#sc_configuration)
* [ZooKeeper Commands](#sc_zkCommands)
* [Data File Management](#sc_dataFileManagement)
* [Things to Avoid](#sc_commonProblems)
* [Best Practices](#sc_bestPractices)

<a name="sc_designing"></a>

### Designing a ZooKeeper Deployment

The reliability of ZooKeeper rests on two basic assumptions.

1. Only a minority of servers in a deployment
  will fail. _Failure_ in this context
  means a machine crash, or some error in the network that
  partitions a server off from the majority.
1. Deployed machines operate correctly. To
  operate correctly means to execute code correctly, to have
  clocks that work properly, and to have storage and network
  components that perform consistently.

The sections below contain considerations for ZooKeeper
administrators to maximize the probability for these assumptions
to hold true. Some of these are cross-machines considerations,
and others are things you should consider for each and every
machine in your deployment.

<a name="sc_CrossMachineRequirements"></a>

#### Cross Machine Requirements

For the ZooKeeper service to be active, there must be a
majority of non-failing machines that can communicate with
each other. To create a deployment that can tolerate the
failure of F machines, you should count on deploying 2xF+1
machines.  Thus, a deployment that consists of three machines
can handle one failure, and a deployment of five machines can
handle two failures. Note that a deployment of six machines
can only handle two failures since three machines is not a
majority.  For this reason, ZooKeeper deployments are usually
made up of an odd number of machines.

To achieve the highest probability of tolerating a failure
you should try to make machine failures independent. For
example, if most of the machines share the same switch,
failure of that switch could cause a correlated failure and
bring down the service. The same holds true of shared power
circuits, cooling systems, etc.

<a name="Single+Machine+Requirements"></a>

#### Single Machine Requirements

If ZooKeeper has to contend with other applications for
access to resources like storage media, CPU, network, or
memory, its performance will suffer markedly.  ZooKeeper has
strong durability guarantees, which means it uses storage
media to log changes before the operation responsible for the
change is allowed to complete. You should be aware of this
dependency then, and take great care if you want to ensure
that ZooKeeper operations aren’t held up by your media. Here
are some things you can do to minimize that sort of
degradation:

* ZooKeeper's transaction log must be on a dedicated
  device. (A dedicated partition is not enough.) ZooKeeper
  writes the log sequentially, without seeking Sharing your
  log device with other processes can cause seeks and
  contention, which in turn can cause multi-second
  delays.
* Do not put ZooKeeper in a situation that can cause a
  swap. In order for ZooKeeper to function with any sort of
  timeliness, it simply cannot be allowed to swap.
  Therefore, make certain that the maximum heap size given
  to ZooKeeper is not bigger than the amount of real memory
  available to ZooKeeper.  For more on this, see
  [Things to Avoid](#sc_commonProblems)
  below.

<a name="sc_provisioning"></a>

### Provisioning

<a name="sc_strengthsAndLimitations"></a>

### Things to Consider: ZooKeeper Strengths and Limitations

<a name="sc_administering"></a>

### Administering

<a name="sc_maintenance"></a>

### Maintenance

Little long term maintenance is required for a ZooKeeper
cluster however you must be aware of the following:

<a name="Ongoing+Data+Directory+Cleanup"></a>

#### Ongoing Data Directory Cleanup

The ZooKeeper [Data
Directory](#var_datadir) contains files which are a persistent copy
of the znodes stored by a particular serving ensemble. These
are the snapshot and transactional log files. As changes are
made to the znodes these changes are appended to a
transaction log. Occasionally, when a log grows large, a
snapshot of the current state of all znodes will be written
to the filesystem and a new transaction log file is created
for future transactions. During snapshotting, ZooKeeper may
continue appending incoming transactions to the old log file.
Therefore, some transactions which are newer than a snapshot
may be found in the last transaction log preceding the
snapshot.

A ZooKeeper server **will not remove
old snapshots and log files** when using the default
configuration (see autopurge below), this is the
responsibility of the operator. Every serving environment is
different and therefore the requirements of managing these
files may differ from install to install (backup for example).

The PurgeTxnLog utility implements a simple retention
policy that administrators can use. The [API docs](index.html) contains details on
calling conventions (arguments, etc...).

In the following example the last count snapshots and
their corresponding logs are retained and the others are
deleted.  The value of <count> should typically be
greater than 3 (although not required, this provides 3 backups
in the unlikely event a recent log has become corrupted). This
can be run as a cron job on the ZooKeeper server machines to
clean up the logs daily.

    java -cp zookeeper.jar:lib/slf4j-api-1.7.5.jar:lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.7.5.jar:lib/log4j-1.2.17.jar:conf org.apache.zookeeper.server.PurgeTxnLog <dataDir> <snapDir> -n <count>


Automatic purging of the snapshots and corresponding
transaction logs was introduced in version 3.4.0 and can be
enabled via the following configuration parameters **autopurge.snapRetainCount** and **autopurge.purgeInterval**. For more on
this, see [Advanced Configuration](#sc_advancedConfiguration)
below.

<a name="Debug+Log+Cleanup+%28log4j%29"></a>

#### Debug Log Cleanup (log4j)

See the section on [logging](#sc_logging) in this document. It is
expected that you will setup a rolling file appender using the
in-built log4j feature. The sample configuration file in the
release tar's conf/log4j.properties provides an example of
this.

<a name="sc_supervision"></a>

### Supervision

You will want to have a supervisory process that manages
each of your ZooKeeper server processes (JVM). The ZK server is
designed to be "fail fast" meaning that it will shutdown
(process exit) if an error occurs that it cannot recover
from. As a ZooKeeper serving cluster is highly reliable, this
means that while the server may go down the cluster as a whole
is still active and serving requests. Additionally, as the
cluster is "self healing" the failed server once restarted will
automatically rejoin the ensemble w/o any manual
interaction.

Having a supervisory process such as [daemontools](http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html) or
[SMF](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service\_Management\_Facility)
(other options for supervisory process are also available, it's
up to you which one you would like to use, these are just two
examples) managing your ZooKeeper server ensures that if the
process does exit abnormally it will automatically be restarted
and will quickly rejoin the cluster.

It is also recommended to configure the ZooKeeper server process to
terminate and dump its heap if an OutOfMemoryError** occurs.  This is achieved
by launching the JVM with the following arguments on Linux and Windows
respectively.  The *zkServer.sh* and
*zkServer.cmd* scripts that ship with ZooKeeper set
these options.

    -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -XX:OnOutOfMemoryError='kill -9 %p'

    "-XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError" "-XX:OnOutOfMemoryError=cmd /c taskkill /pid %%%%p /t /f"

<a name="sc_monitoring"></a>

### Monitoring

The ZooKeeper service can be monitored in one of three primary ways:

* the command port through the use of [4 letter words](#sc_zkCommands)
* with [JMX](zookeeperJMX.html)
* using the [`zkServer.sh status` command](zookeeperTools.html#zkServer)

<a name="sc_logging"></a>

### Logging

ZooKeeper uses **[SLF4J](http://www.slf4j.org)**
version 1.7.5 as its logging infrastructure. For backward compatibility it is bound to
**LOG4J** but you can use
**[LOGBack](http://logback.qos.ch/)**
or any other supported logging framework of your choice.

The ZooKeeper default *log4j.properties*
file resides in the *conf* directory. Log4j requires that
*log4j.properties* either be in the working directory
(the directory from which ZooKeeper is run) or be accessible from the classpath.

For more information about SLF4J, see
[its manual](http://www.slf4j.org/manual.html).

For more information about LOG4J, see
[Log4j Default Initialization Procedure](http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/manual.html#defaultInit)
of the log4j manual.

<a name="sc_troubleshooting"></a>

### Troubleshooting

* *Server not coming up because of file corruption* :
    A server might not be able to read its database and fail to come up because of
    some file corruption in the transaction logs of the ZooKeeper server. You will
    see some IOException on loading ZooKeeper database. In such a case,
    make sure all the other servers in your ensemble are up and  working. Use "stat"
    command on the command port to see if they are in good health. After you have verified that
    all the other servers of the ensemble are up, you can go ahead and clean the database
    of the corrupt server. Delete all the files in datadir/version-2 and datalogdir/version-2/.
    Restart the server.

<a name="sc_configuration"></a>

### Configuration Parameters

ZooKeeper's behavior is governed by the ZooKeeper configuration
file. This file is designed so that the exact same file can be used by
all the servers that make up a ZooKeeper server assuming the disk
layouts are the same. If servers use different configuration files, care
must be taken to ensure that the list of servers in all of the different
configuration files match.

###### Note
>In 3.5.0 and later, some of these parameters should be placed in
a dynamic configuration file. If they are placed in the static
configuration file, ZooKeeper will automatically move them over to the
dynamic configuration file. See [Dynamic Reconfiguration](zookeeperReconfig.html) for more information.

<a name="sc_minimumConfiguration"></a>

#### Minimum Configuration

Here are the minimum configuration keywords that must be defined
in the configuration file:

* *clientPort* :
    the port to listen for client connections; that is, the
    port that clients attempt to connect to.

* *secureClientPort* :
    the port to listen on for secure client connections using SSL.
    **clientPort** specifies
    the port for plaintext connections while **secureClientPort** specifies the port for SSL
    connections. Specifying both enables mixed-mode while omitting
    either will disable that mode.
    Note that SSL feature will be enabled when user plugs-in
    zookeeper.serverCnxnFactory, zookeeper.clientCnxnSocket as Netty.

* *observerMasterPort* :
    the port to listen for observer connections; that is, the
    port that observers attempt to connect to.
    if the property is set then the server will host observer connections
    when in follower mode in addition to when in leader mode and correspondingly
    attempt to connect to any voting peer when in observer mode.

* *dataDir* :
    the location where ZooKeeper will store the in-memory
    database snapshots and, unless specified otherwise, the
    transaction log of updates to the database.
    ###### Note
    >Be careful where you put the transaction log. A
    dedicated transaction log device is key to consistent good
    performance. Putting the log on a busy device will adversely
    affect performance.

* *tickTime* :
    the length of a single tick, which is the basic time unit
    used by ZooKeeper, as measured in milliseconds. It is used to
    regulate heartbeats, and timeouts. For example, the minimum
    session timeout will be two ticks.

<a name="sc_advancedConfiguration"></a>

#### Advanced Configuration

The configuration settings in the section are optional. You can
use them to further fine tune the behaviour of your ZooKeeper servers.
Some can also be set using Java system properties, generally of the
form _zookeeper.keyword_. The exact system
property, when available, is noted below.

* *dataLogDir* :
    (No Java system property)
    This option will direct the machine to write the
    transaction log to the **dataLogDir** rather than the **dataDir**. This allows a dedicated log
    device to be used, and helps avoid competition between logging
    and snapshots.
    ###### Note
    >Having a dedicated log device has a large impact on
    throughput and stable latencies. It is highly recommended to
    dedicate a log device and set **dataLogDir** to point to a directory on
    that device, and then make sure to point **dataDir** to a directory
    _not_ residing on that device.

* *globalOutstandingLimit* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.globalOutstandingLimit.**)
    Clients can submit requests faster than ZooKeeper can
    process them, especially if there are a lot of clients. To
    prevent ZooKeeper from running out of memory due to queued
    requests, ZooKeeper will throttle clients so that there is no
    more than globalOutstandingLimit outstanding requests in the
    system. The default limit is 1,000.

* *preAllocSize* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.preAllocSize**)
    To avoid seeks ZooKeeper allocates space in the
    transaction log file in blocks of preAllocSize kilobytes. The
    default block size is 64M. One reason for changing the size of
    the blocks is to reduce the block size if snapshots are taken
    more often. (Also, see **snapCount** and **snapSizeLimitInKb**).

* *snapCount* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.snapCount**)
    ZooKeeper records its transactions using snapshots and
    a transaction log (think write-ahead log).The number of
    transactions recorded in the transaction log before a snapshot
    can be taken (and the transaction log rolled) is determined
    by snapCount. In order to prevent all of the machines in the quorum
    from taking a snapshot at the same time, each ZooKeeper server
    will take a snapshot when the number of transactions in the transaction log
    reaches a runtime generated random value in the \[snapCount/2+1, snapCount]
    range.The default snapCount is 100,000.

* *commitLogCount* * :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.commitLogCount**)
    Zookeeper maintains an in-memory list of last committed requests for fast synchronization with
    followers when the followers are not too behind. This improves sync performance in case when your
    snapshots are large (>100,000).
    The default commitLogCount value is 500.

* *snapSizeLimitInKb* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.snapSizeLimitInKb**)
    ZooKeeper records its transactions using snapshots and
    a transaction log (think write-ahead log). The total size in bytes allowed
    in the set of transactions recorded in the transaction log before a snapshot
    can be taken (and the transaction log rolled) is determined
    by snapSize. In order to prevent all of the machines in the quorum
    from taking a snapshot at the same time, each ZooKeeper server
    will take a snapshot when the size in bytes of the set of transactions in the
    transaction log reaches a runtime generated random value in the \[snapSize/2+1, snapSize]
    range. Each file system has a minimum standard file size and in order
    to for valid functioning of this feature, the number chosen must be larger
    than that value. The default snapSizeLimitInKb is 4,194,304 (4GB).
    A non-positive value will disable the feature.

* *txnLogSizeLimitInKb* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.txnLogSizeLimitInKb**)
    Zookeeper transaction log file can also be controlled more
    directly using txnLogSizeLimitInKb. Larger txn logs can lead to
    slower follower syncs when sync is done using transaction log.
    This is because leader has to scan through the appropriate log
    file on disk to find the transaction to start sync from.
    This feature is turned off by default and snapCount and snapSizeLimitInKb are the
    only values that limit transaction log size. When enabled
    Zookeeper will roll the log when any of the limits is hit.
    Please note that actual log size can exceed this value by the size
    of the serialized transaction. On the other hand, if this value is
    set too close to (or smaller than) **preAllocSize**,
    it can cause Zookeeper to roll the log for every transaction. While
    this is not a correctness issue, this may cause severely degraded
    performance. To avoid this and to get most out of this feature, it is
    recommended to set the value to N * **preAllocSize**
    where N >= 2.

* *maxCnxns* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.maxCnxns**)
    Limits the total number of concurrent connections that can be made to a
    zookeeper server (per client Port of each server ). This is used to prevent certain
    classes of DoS attacks. The default is 0 and setting it to 0 entirely removes
    the limit on total number of concurrent connections.  Accounting for the
    number of connections for serverCnxnFactory and a secureServerCnxnFactory is done
    separately, so a peer is allowed to host up to 2*maxCnxns provided they are of appropriate types.

* *maxClientCnxns* :
    (No Java system property)
    Limits the number of concurrent connections (at the socket
    level) that a single client, identified by IP address, may make
    to a single member of the ZooKeeper ensemble. This is used to
    prevent certain classes of DoS attacks, including file
    descriptor exhaustion. The default is 60. Setting this to 0
    entirely removes the limit on concurrent connections.

* *clientPortAddress* :
    **New in 3.3.0:** the
    address (ipv4, ipv6 or hostname) to listen for client
    connections; that is, the address that clients attempt
    to connect to. This is optional, by default we bind in
    such a way that any connection to the **clientPort** for any
    address/interface/nic on the server will be
    accepted.

* *minSessionTimeout* :
    (No Java system property)
    **New in 3.3.0:** the
    minimum session timeout in milliseconds that the server
    will allow the client to negotiate. Defaults to 2 times
    the **tickTime**.

* *maxSessionTimeout* :
    (No Java system property)
    **New in 3.3.0:** the
    maximum session timeout in milliseconds that the server
    will allow the client to negotiate. Defaults to 20 times
    the **tickTime**.

* *fsync.warningthresholdms* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.fsync.warningthresholdms**)
    **New in 3.3.4:** A
    warning message will be output to the log whenever an
    fsync in the Transactional Log (WAL) takes longer than
    this value. The values is specified in milliseconds and
    defaults to 1000. This value can only be set as a
    system property.

* *maxResponseCacheSize* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.maxResponseCacheSize**)
    When set to a positive integer, it determines the size
    of the cache that stores the serialized form of recently
    read records. Helps save the serialization cost on
    popular znodes. The metrics **response_packet_cache_hits**
    and **response_packet_cache_misses** can be used to tune
    this value to a given workload. The feature is turned on
    by default with a value of 400, set to 0 or a negative
    integer to turn the feature off.

* *maxGetChildrenResponseCacheSize* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.maxGetChildrenResponseCacheSize**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    Similar to **maxResponseCacheSize**, but applies to get children
    requests. The metrics **response_packet_get_children_cache_hits**
    and **response_packet_get_children_cache_misses** can be used to tune
    this value to a given workload. The feature is turned on
    by default with a value of 400, set to 0 or a negative
    integer to turn the feature off.

* *autopurge.snapRetainCount* :
    (No Java system property)
    **New in 3.4.0:**
    When enabled, ZooKeeper auto purge feature retains
    the **autopurge.snapRetainCount** most
    recent snapshots and the corresponding transaction logs in the
    **dataDir** and **dataLogDir** respectively and deletes the rest.
    Defaults to 3. Minimum value is 3.

* *autopurge.purgeInterval* :
    (No Java system property)
    **New in 3.4.0:** The
    time interval in hours for which the purge task has to
    be triggered. Set to a positive integer (1 and above)
    to enable the auto purging. Defaults to 0.

* *syncEnabled* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.observer.syncEnabled**)
    **New in 3.4.6, 3.5.0:**
    The observers now log transaction and write snapshot to disk
    by default like the participants. This reduces the recovery time
    of the observers on restart. Set to "false" to disable this
    feature. Default is "true"

* *fastleader.minNotificationInterval* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.fastleader.minNotificationInterval**)
    Lower bound for length of time between two consecutive notification
    checks on the leader election. This interval determines how long a
    peer waits to check the set of election votes and effects how
    quickly an election can resolve. The interval follows a backoff
    strategy from the configured minimum (this) and the configured maximum
    (fastleader.maxNotificationInterval) for long elections.

* *fastleader.maxNotificationInterval* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.fastleader.maxNotificationInterval**)
    Upper bound for length of time between two consecutive notification
    checks on the leader election. This interval determines how long a
    peer waits to check the set of election votes and effects how
    quickly an election can resolve. The interval follows a backoff
    strategy from the configured minimum (fastleader.minNotificationInterval)
    and the configured maximum (this) for long elections.

* *connectionMaxTokens* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.connection_throttle_tokens**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    This is one of the parameters to tune the server-side connection throttler,
    which is a token-based rate limiting mechanism with optional probabilistic
    dropping.
    This parameter defines the maximum number of tokens in the token-bucket.
    When set to 0, throttling is disabled. Default is 0.

* *connectionTokenFillTime* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.connection_throttle_fill_time**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    This is one of the parameters to tune the server-side connection throttler,
    which is a token-based rate limiting mechanism with optional probabilistic
    dropping.
    This parameter defines the interval in milliseconds when the token bucket is re-filled with
    *connectionTokenFillCount* tokens. Default is 1.

* *connectionTokenFillCount* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.connection_throttle_fill_count**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    This is one of the parameters to tune the server-side connection throttler,
    which is a token-based rate limiting mechanism with optional probabilistic
    dropping.
    This parameter defines the number of tokens to add to the token bucket every
    *connectionTokenFillTime* milliseconds. Default is 1.

* *connectionFreezeTime* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.connection_throttle_freeze_time**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    This is one of the parameters to tune the server-side connection throttler,
    which is a token-based rate limiting mechanism with optional probabilistic
    dropping.
    This parameter defines the interval in milliseconds when the dropping
    probability is adjusted. When set to -1, probabilistic dropping is disabled.
    Default is -1.

* *connectionDropIncrease* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.connection_throttle_drop_increase**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    This is one of the parameters to tune the server-side connection throttler,
    which is a token-based rate limiting mechanism with optional probabilistic
    dropping.
    This parameter defines the dropping probability to increase. The throttler
    checks every *connectionFreezeTime* milliseconds and if the token bucket is
    empty, the dropping probability will be increased by *connectionDropIncrease*.
    The default is 0.02.

* *connectionDropDecrease* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.connection_throttle_drop_decrease**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    This is one of the parameters to tune the server-side connection throttler,
    which is a token-based rate limiting mechanism with optional probabilistic
    dropping.
    This parameter defines the dropping probability to decrease. The throttler
    checks every *connectionFreezeTime* milliseconds and if the token bucket has
    more tokens than a threshold, the dropping probability will be decreased by
    *connectionDropDecrease*. The threshold is *connectionMaxTokens* \*
    *connectionDecreaseRatio*. The default is 0.002.

* *connectionDecreaseRatio* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.connection_throttle_decrease_ratio**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    This is one of the parameters to tune the server-side connection throttler,
    which is a token-based rate limiting mechanism with optional probabilistic
    dropping. This parameter defines the threshold to decrease the dropping
    probability. The default is 0.

* *zookeeper.connection_throttle_weight_enabled* :
    (Java system property only)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    Whether to consider connection weights when throttling. Only useful when connection throttle is enabled, that is, connectionMaxTokens is larger than 0. The default is false.

* *zookeeper.connection_throttle_global_session_weight* :
    (Java system property only)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The weight of a global session. It is the number of tokens required for a global session request to get through the connection throttler. It has to be a positive integer no smaller than the weight of a local session. The default is 3.

* *zookeeper.connection_throttle_local_session_weight* :
    (Java system property only)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The weight of a local session. It is the number of tokens required for a local session request to get through the connection throttler. It has to be a positive integer no larger than the weight of a global session or a renew session. The default is 1.

* *zookeeper.connection_throttle_renew_session_weight* :
    (Java system property only)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The weight of renewing a session. It is also the number of tokens required for a reconnect request to get through the throttler. It has to be a positive integer no smaller than the weight of a local session. The default is 2.


 * *clientPortListenBacklog* :
    **New in 3.4.14, 3.5.5, 3.6.0:**
    The socket backlog length for the ZooKeeper server socket. This controls
    the number of requests that will be queued server-side to be processed
    by the ZooKeeper server. Connections that exceed this length will receive
    a network timeout (30s) which may cause ZooKeeper session expiry issues.
    By default, this value is unset (`-1`) which, on Linux, uses a backlog of
    `50`. This value must be a positive number.

* *serverCnxnFactory* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.serverCnxnFactory**)
    Specifies ServerCnxnFactory implementation.
    This should be set to `NettyServerCnxnFactory` in order to use TLS based server communication.
    Default is `NIOServerCnxnFactory`.

* *flushDelay* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.flushDelay**)
    Time in milliseconds to delay the flush of the commit log.
    Does not affect the limit defined by *maxBatchSize*.
    Disabled by default (with value 0). Ensembles with high write rates
    may see throughput improved with a value of 10-20 ms.

* *maxWriteQueuePollTime* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.maxWriteQueuePollTime**)
    If *flushDelay* is enabled, this determines the amount of time in milliseconds
    to wait before flushing when no new requests are being queued.
    Set to *flushDelay*/3 by default (implicitly disabled by default).

* *maxBatchSize* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.maxBatchSize**)
    The number of transactions allowed in the server before a flush of the
    commit log is triggered.
    Does not affect the limit defined by *flushDelay*.
    Default is 1000.

* *requestThrottleLimit* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.request_throttle_max_requests**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The total number of outstanding requests allowed before the RequestThrottler starts stalling. When set to 0, throttling is disabled. The default is 0.

* *requestThrottleStallTime* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.request_throttle_stall_time**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The maximum time (in milliseconds) for which a thread may wait to be notified that it may proceed processing a request. The default is 100.

* *requestThrottleDropStale* :
    (Java system property: **request_throttle_drop_stale**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    When enabled, the throttler will drop stale requests rather than issue them to the request pipeline. A stale request is a request sent by a connection that is now closed, and/or a request that will have a  request latency higher than the sessionTimeout. The default is true.

* *requestStaleLatencyCheck* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.request_stale_latency_check**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    When enabled, a request is considered stale if the request latency is higher than its associated session timeout. Disabled by default.

* *requestStaleConnectionCheck* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.request_stale_connection_check**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    When enabled, a request is considered stale if the request's connection has closed. Enabled by default.

* *zookeeper.request_throttler.shutdownTimeout* :
    (Java system property only)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The time (in milliseconds) the RequestThrottler waits for the request queue to drain during shutdown before it shuts down forcefully. The default is 10000.  

* *advancedFlowControlEnabled* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.netty.advancedFlowControl.enabled**)
    Using accurate flow control in netty based on the status of ZooKeeper
    pipeline to avoid direct buffer OOM. It will disable the AUTO_READ in
    Netty.

* *enableEagerACLCheck* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.enableEagerACLCheck**)
    When set to "true", enables eager ACL check on write requests on each local
    server before sending the requests to quorum. Default is "false".

* *maxConcurrentSnapSyncs* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.leader.maxConcurrentSnapSyncs**)
    The maximum number of snap syncs a leader or a follower can serve at the same
    time. The default is 10.

* *maxConcurrentDiffSyncs* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.leader.maxConcurrentDiffSyncs**)
    The maximum number of diff syncs a leader or a follower can serve at the same
    time. The default is 100.

* *digest.enabled* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.digest.enabled**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The digest feature is added to detect the data inconsistency inside
    ZooKeeper when loading database from disk, catching up and following
    leader, its doing incrementally hash check for the DataTree based on 
    the adHash paper mentioned in

        https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~daniele/papers/IncHash.pdf

    The idea is simple, the hash value of DataTree will be updated incrementally 
    based on the changes to the set of data. When the leader is preparing the txn, 
    it will pre-calculate the hash of the tree based on the changes happened with 
    formula:

        current_hash = current_hash + hash(new node data) - hash(old node data)

    If it’s creating a new node, the hash(old node data) will be 0, and if it’s a 
    delete node op, the hash(new node data) will be 0.

    This hash will be associated with each txn to represent the expected hash value 
    after applying the txn to the data tree, it will be sent to followers with 
    original proposals. Learner will compare the actual hash value with the one in 
    the txn after applying the txn to the data tree, and report mismatch if it’s not 
    the same.

    These digest value will also be persisted with each txn and snapshot on the disk, 
    so when servers restarted and load data from disk, it will compare and see if 
    there is hash mismatch, which will help detect data loss issue on disk.

    For the actual hash function, we’re using CRC internally, it’s not a collisionless 
    hash function, but it’s more efficient compared to collisionless hash, and the 
    collision possibility is really really rare and can already meet our needs here.

    This feature is backward and forward compatible, so it can safely rolling upgrade, 
    downgrade, enabled and later disabled without any compatible issue. Here are the 
    scenarios have been covered and tested:

    1. When leader runs with new code while follower runs with old one, the digest will 
       be append to the end of each txn, follower will only read header and txn data, 
       digest value in the txn will be ignored. It won't affect the follower reads and 
       processes the next txn.
    2. When leader runs with old code while follower runs with new one, the digest won't
       be sent with txn, when follower tries to read the digest, it will throw EOF which 
       is caught and handled gracefully with digest value set to null.
    3. When loading old snapshot with new code, it will throw IOException when trying to
       read the non-exist digest value, and the exception will be caught and digest will
       be set to null, which means we won't compare digest when loading this snapshot, 
       which is expected to happen during rolling upgrade
    4. When loading new snapshot with old code, it will finish successfully after deserialzing 
       the data tree, the digest value at the end of snapshot file will be ignored
    5. The scenarios of rolling restart with flags change are similar to the 1st and 2nd 
       scenarios discussed above, if the leader enabled but follower not, digest value will
       be ignored, and follower won't compare the digest during runtime; if leader disabled
       but follower enabled, follower will get EOF exception which is handled gracefully.

    Note: the current digest calculation excluded nodes under /zookeeper 
    due to the potential inconsistency in the /zookeeper/quota stat node, 
    we can include that after that issue is fixed.

    By default, this feature is enabled, set "false" to disable it.

* *snapshot.compression.method* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.snapshot.compression.method**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    This property controls whether or not ZooKeeper should compress snapshots
    before storing them on disk (see [ZOOKEEPER-3179](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ZOOKEEPER-3179)).
    Possible values are:
    - "": Disabled (no snapshot compression). This is the default behavior.
    - "gz": See [gzip compression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gzip).
    - "snappy": See [Snappy compression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snappy_(compression)).

* *snapshot.trust.empty* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.snapshot.trust.empty**)
    **New in 3.5.6:**
    This property controls whether or not ZooKeeper should treat missing
    snapshot files as a fatal state that can't be recovered from.
    Set to true to allow ZooKeeper servers recover without snapshot
    files. This should only be set during upgrading from old versions of
    ZooKeeper (3.4.x, pre 3.5.3) where ZooKeeper might only have transaction
    log files but without presence of snapshot files. If the value is set
    during upgrade, we recommend to set the value back to false after upgrading
    and restart ZooKeeper process so ZooKeeper can continue normal data
    consistency check during recovery process.
    Default value is false.

* *audit.enable* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.audit.enable**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    By default audit logs are disabled. Set to "true" to enable it. Default value is "false".
    See the [ZooKeeper audit logs](zookeeperAuditLogs.html) for more information.
    
* *audit.impl.class* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.audit.impl.class**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    Class to implement the audit logger. By default log4j based audit logger org.apache.zookeeper.audit
    .Log4jAuditLogger is used.
    See the [ZooKeeper audit logs](zookeeperAuditLogs.html) for more information.

* *largeRequestMaxBytes* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.largeRequestMaxBytes**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The maximum number of bytes of all inflight large request. The connection will be closed if a coming large request causes the limit exceeded. The default is 100 * 1024 * 1024.

* *largeRequestThreshold* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.largeRequestThreshold**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    The size threshold after which a request is considered a large request. If it is -1, then all requests are considered small, effectively turning off large request throttling. The default is -1.

* *outstandingHandshake.limit* 
    (Jave system property only: **zookeeper.netty.server.outstandingHandshake.limit**)
    The maximum in-flight TLS handshake connections could have in ZooKeeper, 
    the connections exceed this limit will be rejected before starting handshake. 
    This setting doesn't limit the max TLS concurrency, but helps avoid herd 
    effect due to TLS handshake timeout when there are too many in-flight TLS 
    handshakes. Set it to something like 250 is good enough to avoid herd effect.

* *learner.asyncSending*
  (Java system property: **zookeeper.learner.asyncSending**)
  (Java system property: **learner.asyncSending**)(Added for backward compatibility)
  **New in 3.7.0:**
  The sending and receiving packets in Learner were done synchronously in a critical section. An untimely network issue could cause the followers to hang (see [ZOOKEEPER-3575](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ZOOKEEPER-3575) and [ZOOKEEPER-4074](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ZOOKEEPER-4074)). The new design moves sending packets in Learner to a separate thread and sends the packets asynchronously. The new design is enabled with this parameter (learner.asyncSending).
  The default is false.
<a name="sc_clusterOptions"></a>

#### Cluster Options

The options in this section are designed for use with an ensemble
of servers -- that is, when deploying clusters of servers.

* *electionAlg* :
    (No Java system property)
    Election implementation to use. A value of "1" corresponds to the
    non-authenticated UDP-based version of fast leader election, "2"
    corresponds to the authenticated UDP-based version of fast
    leader election, and "3" corresponds to TCP-based version of
    fast leader election. Algorithm 3 was made default in 3.2.0 and 
    prior versions (3.0.0 and 3.1.0) were using algorithm 1 and 2 as well.
    ###### Note
    >The implementations of leader election 1, and 2 were 
    **deprecated** in 3.4.0. Since 3.6.0 only FastLeaderElection is available, 
    in case of upgrade you have to shutdown all of your servers and 
    restart them with electionAlg=3 (or by removing the line from the configuration file).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        >                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

* *initLimit* :
    (No Java system property)
    Amount of time, in ticks (see [tickTime](#id_tickTime)), to allow followers to
    connect and sync to a leader. Increased this value as needed, if
    the amount of data managed by ZooKeeper is large.

* *connectToLearnerMasterLimit* :
    (Java system property: zookeeper.**connectToLearnerMasterLimit**)
    Amount of time, in ticks (see [tickTime](#id_tickTime)), to allow followers to
    connect to the leader after leader election. Defaults to the value of initLimit.
    Use when initLimit is high so connecting to learner master doesn't result in higher timeout.

* *leaderServes* :
    (Java system property: zookeeper.**leaderServes**)
    Leader accepts client connections. Default value is "yes".
    The leader machine coordinates updates. For higher update
    throughput at the slight expense of read throughput the leader
    can be configured to not accept clients and focus on
    coordination. The default to this option is yes, which means
    that a leader will accept client connections.
    ###### Note
    >Turning on leader selection is highly recommended when
    you have more than three ZooKeeper servers in an ensemble.

* *server.x=[hostname]:nnnnn[:nnnnn] etc* :
    (No Java system property)
    servers making up the ZooKeeper ensemble. When the server
    starts up, it determines which server it is by looking for the
    file *myid* in the data directory. That file
    contains the server number, in ASCII, and it should match
    **x** in **server.x** in the left hand side of this
    setting.
    The list of servers that make up ZooKeeper servers that is
    used by the clients must match the list of ZooKeeper servers
    that each ZooKeeper server has.
    There are two port numbers **nnnnn**.
    The first followers use to connect to the leader, and the second is for
    leader election. If you want to test multiple servers on a single machine, then
    different ports can be used for each server.
    

    <a name="id_multi_address"></a>
    Since ZooKeeper 3.6.0 it is possible to specify **multiple addresses** for each
    ZooKeeper server (see [ZOOKEEPER-3188](https://issues.apache.org/jira/projects/ZOOKEEPER/issues/ZOOKEEPER-3188)).
    To enable this feature, you must set the *multiAddress.enabled* configuration property
    to *true*. This helps to increase availability and adds network level 
    resiliency to ZooKeeper. When multiple physical network interfaces are used 
    for the servers, ZooKeeper is able to bind on all interfaces and runtime switching 
    to a working interface in case a network error. The different addresses can be specified
    in the config using a pipe ('|') character. A valid configuration using multiple addresses looks like:

        server.1=zoo1-net1:2888:3888|zoo1-net2:2889:3889
        server.2=zoo2-net1:2888:3888|zoo2-net2:2889:3889
        server.3=zoo3-net1:2888:3888|zoo3-net2:2889:3889


    ###### Note
    >By enabling this feature, the Quorum protocol (ZooKeeper Server-Server protocol) will change.
    The users will not notice this and when anyone starts a ZooKeeper cluster with the new config,
    everything will work normally. However, it's not possible to enable this feature and specify
    multiple addresses during a rolling upgrade if the old ZooKeeper cluster didn't support the
    *multiAddress* feature (and the new Quorum protocol). In case if you need this feature but you
    also need to perform a rolling upgrade from a ZooKeeper cluster older than *3.6.0*, then you
    first need to do the rolling upgrade without enabling the MultiAddress feature and later make
    a separate rolling restart with the new configuration where **multiAddress.enabled** is set
    to **true** and multiple addresses are provided.

* *syncLimit* :
    (No Java system property)
    Amount of time, in ticks (see [tickTime](#id_tickTime)), to allow followers to sync
    with ZooKeeper. If followers fall too far behind a leader, they
    will be dropped.

* *group.x=nnnnn[:nnnnn]* :
    (No Java system property)
    Enables a hierarchical quorum construction."x" is a group identifier
    and the numbers following the "=" sign correspond to server identifiers.
    The left-hand side of the assignment is a colon-separated list of server
    identifiers. Note that groups must be disjoint and the union of all groups
    must be the ZooKeeper ensemble.
    You will find an example [here](zookeeperHierarchicalQuorums.html)

* *weight.x=nnnnn* :
    (No Java system property)
    Used along with "group", it assigns a weight to a server when
    forming quorums. Such a value corresponds to the weight of a server
    when voting. There are a few parts of ZooKeeper that require voting
    such as leader election and the atomic broadcast protocol. By default
    the weight of server is 1. If the configuration defines groups, but not
    weights, then a value of 1 will be assigned to all servers.
    You will find an example [here](zookeeperHierarchicalQuorums.html)

* *cnxTimeout* :
    (Java system property: zookeeper.**cnxTimeout**)
    Sets the timeout value for opening connections for leader election notifications.
    Only applicable if you are using electionAlg 3.
    ###### Note
    >Default value is 5 seconds.

* *quorumCnxnTimeoutMs* :
    (Java system property: zookeeper.**quorumCnxnTimeoutMs**)
    Sets the read timeout value for the connections for leader election notifications.
    Only applicable if you are using electionAlg 3.
    ######Note
    >Default value is -1, which will then use the syncLimit * tickTime as the timeout.

* *standaloneEnabled* :
    (No Java system property)
    **New in 3.5.0:**
    When set to false, a single server can be started in replicated
    mode, a lone participant can run with observers, and a cluster
    can reconfigure down to one node, and up from one node. The
    default is true for backwards compatibility. It can be set
    using QuorumPeerConfig's setStandaloneEnabled method or by
    adding "standaloneEnabled=false" or "standaloneEnabled=true"
    to a server's config file.

* *reconfigEnabled* :
    (No Java system property)
    **New in 3.5.3:**
    This controls the enabling or disabling of
    [Dynamic Reconfiguration](zookeeperReconfig.html) feature. When the feature
    is enabled, users can perform reconfigure operations through
    the ZooKeeper client API or through ZooKeeper command line tools
    assuming users are authorized to perform such operations.
    When the feature is disabled, no user, including the super user,
    can perform a reconfiguration. Any attempt to reconfigure will return an error.
    **"reconfigEnabled"** option can be set as
    **"reconfigEnabled=false"** or
    **"reconfigEnabled=true"**
    to a server's config file, or using QuorumPeerConfig's
    setReconfigEnabled method. The default value is false.
    If present, the value should be consistent across every server in
    the entire ensemble. Setting the value as true on some servers and false
    on other servers will cause inconsistent behavior depending on which server
    is elected as leader. If the leader has a setting of
    **"reconfigEnabled=true"**, then the ensemble
    will have reconfig feature enabled. If the leader has a setting of
    **"reconfigEnabled=false"**, then the ensemble
    will have reconfig feature disabled. It is thus recommended to have a consistent
    value for **"reconfigEnabled"** across servers
    in the ensemble.

* *4lw.commands.whitelist* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.4lw.commands.whitelist**)
    **New in 3.5.3:**
    A list of comma separated [Four Letter Words](#sc_4lw)
    commands that user wants to use. A valid Four Letter Words
    command must be put in this list else ZooKeeper server will
    not enable the command.
    By default the whitelist only contains "srvr" command
    which zkServer.sh uses. The rest of four letter word commands are disabled
    by default.
    Here's an example of the configuration that enables stat, ruok, conf, and isro
    command while disabling the rest of Four Letter Words command:

        4lw.commands.whitelist=stat, ruok, conf, isro


If you really need enable all four letter word commands by default, you can use
the asterisk option so you don't have to include every command one by one in the list.
As an example, this will enable all four letter word commands:


    4lw.commands.whitelist=*


* *tcpKeepAlive* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.tcpKeepAlive**)
    **New in 3.5.4:**
    Setting this to true sets the TCP keepAlive flag on the
    sockets used by quorum members to perform elections.
    This will allow for connections between quorum members to
    remain up when there is network infrastructure that may
    otherwise break them. Some NATs and firewalls may terminate
    or lose state for long running or idle connections.
    Enabling this option relies on OS level settings to work
    properly, check your operating system's options regarding TCP
    keepalive for more information.  Defaults to
    **false**.
    
* *electionPortBindRetry* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.electionPortBindRetry**)
    Property set max retry count when Zookeeper server fails to bind 
    leader election port. Such errors can be temporary and recoverable, 
    such as DNS issue described in [ZOOKEEPER-3320](https://issues.apache.org/jira/projects/ZOOKEEPER/issues/ZOOKEEPER-3320),
    or non-retryable, such as port already in use.  
    In case of transient errors, this property can improve availability 
    of Zookeeper server and help it to self recover. 
    Default value 3. In container environment, especially in Kubernetes, 
    this value should be increased or set to 0(infinite retry) to overcome issues 
    related to DNS name resolving.
    

* *observer.reconnectDelayMs* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.observer.reconnectDelayMs**)
    When observer loses its connection with the leader, it waits for the
    specified value before trying to reconnect with the leader so that
    the entire observer fleet won't try to run leader election and reconnect
    to the leader at once.
    Defaults to 0 ms.

* *observer.election.DelayMs* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.observer.election.DelayMs**)
    Delay the observer's participation in a leader election upon disconnect
    so as to prevent unexpected additional load on the voting peers during
    the process. Defaults to 200 ms.

* *localSessionsEnabled* and *localSessionsUpgradingEnabled* :
   **New in 3.5:**
   Optional value is true or false. Their default values are false.
   Turning on the local session feature by setting *localSessionsEnabled=true*. Turning on
   *localSessionsUpgradingEnabled* can upgrade a local session to a global session automatically as required (e.g. creating ephemeral nodes),
   which only matters when *localSessionsEnabled* is enabled.

<a name="sc_authOptions"></a>

#### Encryption, Authentication, Authorization Options

The options in this section allow control over
encryption/authentication/authorization performed by the service.

Beside this page, you can also find useful information about client side configuration in the 
[Programmers Guide](zookeeperProgrammers.html#sc_java_client_configuration). 
The ZooKeeper Wiki also has useful pages about [ZooKeeper SSL support](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ZOOKEEPER/ZooKeeper+SSL+User+Guide), 
and [SASL authentication for ZooKeeper](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ZOOKEEPER/ZooKeeper+and+SASL).

* *DigestAuthenticationProvider.superDigest* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.DigestAuthenticationProvider.superDigest**)
    By default this feature is **disabled**
    **New in 3.2:**
    Enables a ZooKeeper ensemble administrator to access the
    znode hierarchy as a "super" user. In particular no ACL
    checking occurs for a user authenticated as
    super.
    org.apache.zookeeper.server.auth.DigestAuthenticationProvider
    can be used to generate the superDigest, call it with
    one parameter of "super:<password>". Provide the
    generated "super:<data>" as the system property value
    when starting each server of the ensemble.
    When authenticating to a ZooKeeper server (from a
    ZooKeeper client) pass a scheme of "digest" and authdata
    of "super:<password>". Note that digest auth passes
    the authdata in plaintext to the server, it would be
    prudent to use this authentication method only on
    localhost (not over the network) or over an encrypted
    connection.

* *X509AuthenticationProvider.superUser* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.X509AuthenticationProvider.superUser**)
    The SSL-backed way to enable a ZooKeeper ensemble
    administrator to access the znode hierarchy as a "super" user.
    When this parameter is set to an X500 principal name, only an
    authenticated client with that principal will be able to bypass
    ACL checking and have full privileges to all znodes.

* *zookeeper.superUser* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.superUser**)
    Similar to **zookeeper.X509AuthenticationProvider.superUser**
    but is generic for SASL based logins. It stores the name of
    a user that can access the znode hierarchy as a "super" user.

* *ssl.authProvider* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.ssl.authProvider**)
    Specifies a subclass of **org.apache.zookeeper.auth.X509AuthenticationProvider**
    to use for secure client authentication. This is useful in
    certificate key infrastructures that do not use JKS. It may be
    necessary to extend **javax.net.ssl.X509KeyManager** and **javax.net.ssl.X509TrustManager**
    to get the desired behavior from the SSL stack. To configure the
    ZooKeeper server to use the custom provider for authentication,
    choose a scheme name for the custom AuthenticationProvider and
    set the property **zookeeper.authProvider.[scheme]** to the fully-qualified class name of the custom
    implementation. This will load the provider into the ProviderRegistry.
    Then set this property **zookeeper.ssl.authProvider=[scheme]** and that provider
    will be used for secure authentication.

* *zookeeper.ensembleAuthName* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.ensembleAuthName**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    Specify a list of comma-separated valid names/aliases of an ensemble. A client
    can provide the ensemble name it intends to connect as the credential for scheme "ensemble". The EnsembleAuthenticationProvider will check the credential against
    the list of names/aliases of the ensemble that receives the connection request.
    If the credential is not in the list, the connection request will be refused.
    This prevents a client accidentally connecting to a wrong ensemble.

* *zookeeper.sessionRequireClientSASLAuth* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.sessionRequireClientSASLAuth**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    When set to **true**, ZooKeeper server will only accept connections and requests from clients
    that have authenticated with server via SASL. Clients that are not configured with SASL
    authentication, or configured with SASL but failed authentication (i.e. with invalid credential)
    will not be able to establish a session with server. A typed error code (-124) will be delivered
    in such case, both Java and C client will close the session with server thereafter,
    without further attempts on retrying to reconnect.

    By default, this feature is disabled. Users who would like to opt-in can enable the feature
    by setting **zookeeper.sessionRequireClientSASLAuth** to **true**.

    This feature overrules the <emphasis role="bold">zookeeper.allowSaslFailedClients</emphasis> option, so even if server is
    configured to allow clients that fail SASL authentication to login, client will not be able to
    establish a session with server if this feature is enabled.

* *sslQuorum* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.sslQuorum**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Enables encrypted quorum communication. Default is `false`.

* *ssl.keyStore.location and ssl.keyStore.password* and *ssl.quorum.keyStore.location* and *ssl.quorum.keyStore.password* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.keyStore.location** and **zookeeper.ssl.keyStore.password** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.keyStore.location** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.keyStore.password**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the file path to a Java keystore containing the local
    credentials to be used for client and quorum TLS connections, and the
    password to unlock the file.

* *ssl.keyStore.type* and *ssl.quorum.keyStore.type* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.keyStore.type** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.keyStore.type**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the file format of client and quorum keystores. Values: JKS, PEM, PKCS12 or null (detect by filename).
    Default: null.
    **New in 3.6.3, 3.7.0:**
    The format BCFKS was added.

* *ssl.trustStore.location* and *ssl.trustStore.password* and *ssl.quorum.trustStore.location* and *ssl.quorum.trustStore.password* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.trustStore.location** and **zookeeper.ssl.trustStore.password** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.trustStore.location** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.trustStore.password**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the file path to a Java truststore containing the remote
    credentials to be used for client and quorum TLS connections, and the
    password to unlock the file.

* *ssl.trustStore.type* and *ssl.quorum.trustStore.type* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.trustStore.type** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.trustStore.type**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the file format of client and quorum trustStores. Values: JKS, PEM, PKCS12 or null (detect by filename).
    Default: null.
    **New in 3.6.3, 3.7.0:**
    The format BCFKS was added.

* *ssl.protocol* and *ssl.quorum.protocol* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.protocol** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.protocol**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies to protocol to be used in client and quorum TLS negotiation.
    Default: TLSv1.2

* *ssl.enabledProtocols* and *ssl.quorum.enabledProtocols* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.enabledProtocols** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.enabledProtocols**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the enabled protocols in client and quorum TLS negotiation.
    Default: value of `protocol` property

* *ssl.ciphersuites* and *ssl.quorum.ciphersuites* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.ciphersuites** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.ciphersuites**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the enabled cipher suites to be used in client and quorum TLS negotiation.
    Default: Enabled cipher suites depend on the Java runtime version being used.    

* *ssl.context.supplier.class* and *ssl.quorum.context.supplier.class* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.context.supplier.class** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.context.supplier.class**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies the class to be used for creating SSL context in client and quorum SSL communication.
    This allows you to use custom SSL context and implement the following scenarios:
    1. Use hardware keystore, loaded in using PKCS11 or something similar.
    2. You don't have access to the software keystore, but can retrieve an already-constructed SSLContext from their container.
    Default: null

* *ssl.hostnameVerification* and *ssl.quorum.hostnameVerification* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.hostnameVerification** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.hostnameVerification**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies whether the hostname verification is enabled in client and quorum TLS negotiation process.
    Disabling it only recommended for testing purposes.
    Default: true

* *ssl.crl* and *ssl.quorum.crl* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.crl** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.crl**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies whether Certificate Revocation List is enabled in client and quorum TLS protocols.
    Default: false

* *ssl.ocsp* and *ssl.quorum.ocsp* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.ocsp** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.ocsp**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    Specifies whether Online Certificate Status Protocol is enabled in client and quorum TLS protocols.
    Default: false

* *ssl.clientAuth* and *ssl.quorum.clientAuth* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.clientAuth** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.clientAuth**)
    **Added in 3.5.5, but broken until 3.5.7:**
    Specifies options to authenticate ssl connections from clients. Valid values are
 
     * "none": server will not request client authentication 
     * "want": server will "request" client authentication 
     * "need": server will "require" client authentication

     Default: "need"

* *ssl.handshakeDetectionTimeoutMillis* and *ssl.quorum.handshakeDetectionTimeoutMillis* :
    (Java system properties: **zookeeper.ssl.handshakeDetectionTimeoutMillis** and **zookeeper.ssl.quorum.handshakeDetectionTimeoutMillis**)
    **New in 3.5.5:**
    TBD

* *client.portUnification*:
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.client.portUnification**)
    Specifies that the client port should accept SSL connections
    (using the same configuration as the secure client port).
    Default: false
    
* *authProvider*:
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.authProvider**)
    You can specify multiple authentication provider classes for ZooKeeper.
    Usually you use this parameter to specify the SASL authentication provider
    like: `authProvider.1=org.apache.zookeeper.server.auth.SASLAuthenticationProvider`
    
* *kerberos.removeHostFromPrincipal*
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.kerberos.removeHostFromPrincipal**)
    You can instruct ZooKeeper to remove the host from the client principal name during authentication.
    (e.g. the zk/myhost@EXAMPLE.COM client principal will be authenticated in ZooKeeper as zk@EXAMPLE.COM)
    Default: false
    
* *kerberos.removeRealmFromPrincipal*
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.kerberos.removeRealmFromPrincipal**)
    You can instruct ZooKeeper to remove the realm from the client principal name during authentication.
    (e.g. the zk/myhost@EXAMPLE.COM client principal will be authenticated in ZooKeeper as zk/myhost)
    Default: false

* *multiAddress.enabled* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.multiAddress.enabled**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    Since ZooKeeper 3.6.0 you can also [specify multiple addresses](#id_multi_address) 
    for each ZooKeeper server instance (this can increase availability when multiple physical 
    network interfaces can be used parallel in the cluster). Setting this parameter to 
    **true** will enable this feature. Please note, that you can not enable this feature
    during a rolling upgrade if the version of the old ZooKeeper cluster is prior to 3.6.0.
    The default value is **false**.

* *multiAddress.reachabilityCheckTimeoutMs* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.multiAddress.reachabilityCheckTimeoutMs**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    Since ZooKeeper 3.6.0 you can also [specify multiple addresses](#id_multi_address) 
    for each ZooKeeper server instance (this can increase availability when multiple physical 
    network interfaces can be used parallel in the cluster). ZooKeeper will perform ICMP ECHO requests
    or try to establish a TCP connection on port 7 (Echo) of the destination host in order to find 
    the reachable addresses. This happens only if you provide multiple addresses in the configuration.
    In this property you can set the timeout in millisecs for the reachability check. The check happens 
    in parallel for the different addresses, so the timeout you set here is the maximum time will be taken
    by checking the reachability of all addresses.
    The default value is **1000**.

    This parameter has no effect, unless you enable the MultiAddress feature by setting *multiAddress.enabled=true*.    

<a name="Experimental+Options%2FFeatures"></a>

#### Experimental Options/Features

New features that are currently considered experimental.

* *Read Only Mode Server* :
    (Java system property: **readonlymode.enabled**)
    **New in 3.4.0:**
    Setting this value to true enables Read Only Mode server
    support (disabled by default). ROM allows clients
    sessions which requested ROM support to connect to the
    server even when the server might be partitioned from
    the quorum. In this mode ROM clients can still read
    values from the ZK service, but will be unable to write
    values and see changes from other clients. See
    ZOOKEEPER-784 for more details.

<a name="Unsafe+Options"></a>

#### Unsafe Options

The following options can be useful, but be careful when you use
them. The risk of each is explained along with the explanation of what
the variable does.

* *forceSync* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.forceSync**)
    Requires updates to be synced to media of the transaction
    log before finishing processing the update. If this option is
    set to no, ZooKeeper will not require updates to be synced to
    the media.

* *jute.maxbuffer* :
    (Java system property:**jute.maxbuffer**).
    - This option can only be set as a Java system property.
    There is no zookeeper prefix on it. It specifies the maximum
    size of the data that can be stored in a znode. The unit is: byte. The default is
    0xfffff(1048575) bytes, or just under 1M.
    - If this option is changed, the system property must be set on all servers and clients otherwise
    problems will arise.
      - When *jute.maxbuffer* in the client side is greater than the server side, the client wants to write the data
        exceeds *jute.maxbuffer* in the server side, the server side will get **java.io.IOException: Len error**
      - When *jute.maxbuffer* in the client side is less than the server side, the client wants to read the data
        exceeds *jute.maxbuffer* in the client side, the client side will get **java.io.IOException: Unreasonable length**
        or **Packet len  is out of range!**
    - This is really a sanity check. ZooKeeper is designed to store data on the order of kilobytes in size.
      In the production environment, increasing this property to exceed the default value is not recommended for the following reasons:
      - Large size znodes cause unwarranted latency spikes, worsen the throughput
      - Large size znodes make the synchronization time between leader and followers unpredictable and non-convergent(sometimes timeout), cause the quorum unstable

* *jute.maxbuffer.extrasize*:
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.jute.maxbuffer.extrasize**)
    **New in 3.5.7:**
    While processing client requests ZooKeeper server adds some additional information into 
    the requests before persisting it as a transaction. Earlier this additional information size 
    was fixed to 1024 bytes. For many scenarios, specially scenarios where jute.maxbuffer value
    is more than 1 MB and request type is multi, this fixed size was insufficient.
    To handle all the scenarios additional information size is increased from 1024 byte 
    to same as jute.maxbuffer size and also it is made configurable through jute.maxbuffer.extrasize.
    Generally this property is not required to be configured as default value is the most optimal value.

* *skipACL* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.skipACL**)
    Skips ACL checks. This results in a boost in throughput,
    but opens up full access to the data tree to everyone.

* *quorumListenOnAllIPs* :
    When set to true the ZooKeeper server will listen
    for connections from its peers on all available IP addresses,
    and not only the address configured in the server list of the
    configuration file. It affects the connections handling the
    ZAB protocol and the Fast Leader Election protocol. Default
    value is **false**.

* *multiAddress.reachabilityCheckEnabled* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.multiAddress.reachabilityCheckEnabled**)
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    Since ZooKeeper 3.6.0 you can also [specify multiple addresses](#id_multi_address) 
    for each ZooKeeper server instance (this can increase availability when multiple physical 
    network interfaces can be used parallel in the cluster). ZooKeeper will perform ICMP ECHO requests
    or try to establish a TCP connection on port 7 (Echo) of the destination host in order to find 
    the reachable addresses. This happens only if you provide multiple addresses in the configuration.
    The reachable check can fail if you hit some ICMP rate-limitation, (e.g. on MacOS) when you try to 
    start a large (e.g. 11+) ensemble members cluster on a single machine for testing. 
    
    Default value is **true**. By setting this parameter to 'false' you can disable the reachability checks. 
    Please note, disabling the reachability check will cause the cluster not to be able to reconfigure 
    itself properly during network problems, so the disabling is advised only during testing. 

    This parameter has no effect, unless you enable the MultiAddress feature by setting *multiAddress.enabled=true*.

<a name="Disabling+data+directory+autocreation"></a>

#### Disabling data directory autocreation

**New in 3.5:** The default
behavior of a ZooKeeper server is to automatically create the
data directory (specified in the configuration file) when
started if that directory does not already exist. This can be
inconvenient and even dangerous in some cases. Take the case
where a configuration change is made to a running server,
wherein the **dataDir** parameter
is accidentally changed. When the ZooKeeper server is
restarted it will create this non-existent directory and begin
serving - with an empty znode namespace. This scenario can
result in an effective "split brain" situation (i.e. data in
both the new invalid directory and the original valid data
store). As such is would be good to have an option to turn off
this autocreate behavior. In general for production
environments this should be done, unfortunately however the
default legacy behavior cannot be changed at this point and
therefore this must be done on a case by case basis. This is
left to users and to packagers of ZooKeeper distributions.

When running **zkServer.sh** autocreate can be disabled
by setting the environment variable **ZOO_DATADIR_AUTOCREATE_DISABLE** to 1.
When running ZooKeeper servers directly from class files this
can be accomplished by setting **zookeeper.datadir.autocreate=false** on
the java command line, i.e. **-Dzookeeper.datadir.autocreate=false**

When this feature is disabled, and the ZooKeeper server
determines that the required directories do not exist it will
generate an error and refuse to start.

A new script **zkServer-initialize.sh** is provided to
support this new feature. If autocreate is disabled it is
necessary for the user to first install ZooKeeper, then create
the data directory (and potentially txnlog directory), and
then start the server. Otherwise as mentioned in the previous
paragraph the server will not start. Running **zkServer-initialize.sh** will create the
required directories, and optionally setup the myid file
(optional command line parameter). This script can be used
even if the autocreate feature itself is not used, and will
likely be of use to users as this (setup, including creation
of the myid file) has been an issue for users in the past.
Note that this script ensures the data directories exist only,
it does not create a config file, but rather requires a config
file to be available in order to execute.

<a name="sc_db_existence_validation"></a>

#### Enabling db existence validation

**New in 3.6.0:** The default
behavior of a ZooKeeper server on startup when no data tree
is found is to set zxid to zero and join the quorum as a
voting member. This can be dangerous if some event (e.g. a
rogue 'rm -rf') has removed the data directory while the
server was down since this server may help elect a leader
that is missing transactions. Enabling db existence validation
will change the behavior on startup when no data tree is
found: the server joins the ensemble as a non-voting participant
until it is able to sync with the leader and acquire an up-to-date
version of the ensemble data. To indicate an empty data tree is
expected (ensemble creation), the user should place a file
'initialize' in the same directory as 'myid'. This file will
be detected and deleted by the server on startup.

Initialization validation can be enabled when running
ZooKeeper servers directly from class files by setting
**zookeeper.db.autocreate=false**
on the java command line, i.e.
**-Dzookeeper.db.autocreate=false**.
Running **zkServer-initialize.sh**
will create the required initialization file.

<a name="sc_performance_options"></a>

#### Performance Tuning Options

**New in 3.5.0:** Several subsystems have been reworked
to improve read throughput. This includes multi-threading of the NIO communication subsystem and
request processing pipeline (Commit Processor). NIO is the default client/server communication
subsystem. Its threading model comprises 1 acceptor thread, 1-N selector threads and 0-M
socket I/O worker threads. In the request processing pipeline the system can be configured
to process multiple read request at once while maintaining the same consistency guarantee
(same-session read-after-write). The Commit Processor threading model comprises 1 main
thread and 0-N worker threads.

The default values are aimed at maximizing read throughput on a dedicated ZooKeeper machine.
Both subsystems need to have sufficient amount of threads to achieve peak read throughput.

* *zookeeper.nio.numSelectorThreads* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.nio.numSelectorThreads**)
    **New in 3.5.0:**
    Number of NIO selector threads. At least 1 selector thread required.
    It is recommended to use more than one selector for large numbers
    of client connections. The default value is sqrt( number of cpu cores / 2 ).

* *zookeeper.nio.numWorkerThreads* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.nio.numWorkerThreads**)
    **New in 3.5.0:**
    Number of NIO worker threads. If configured with 0 worker threads, the selector threads
    do the socket I/O directly. The default value is 2 times the number of cpu cores.

* *zookeeper.commitProcessor.numWorkerThreads* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.commitProcessor.numWorkerThreads**)
    **New in 3.5.0:**
    Number of Commit Processor worker threads. If configured with 0 worker threads, the main thread
    will process the request directly. The default value is the number of cpu cores.

* *zookeeper.commitProcessor.maxReadBatchSize* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.commitProcessor.maxReadBatchSize**)
    Max number of reads to process from queuedRequests before switching to processing commits.
    If the value < 0 (default), we switch whenever we have a local write, and pending commits.
    A high read batch size will delay commit processing, causing stale data to be served.
    If reads are known to arrive in fixed size batches then matching that batch size with
    the value of this property can smooth queue performance. Since reads are handled in parallel,
    one recommendation is to set this property to match *zookeeper.commitProcessor.numWorkerThread*
    (default is the number of cpu cores) or lower.

* *zookeeper.commitProcessor.maxCommitBatchSize* :
    (Java system property only: **zookeeper.commitProcessor.maxCommitBatchSize**)
    Max number of commits to process before processing reads. We will try to process as many
    remote/local commits as we can till we reach this count. A high commit batch size will delay
    reads while processing more commits. A low commit batch size will favor reads.
    It is recommended to only set this property when an ensemble is serving a workload with a high
    commit rate. If writes are known to arrive in a set number of batches then matching that
    batch size with the value of this property can smooth queue performance. A generic
    approach would be to set this value to equal the ensemble size so that with the processing
    of each batch the current server will probabilistically handle a write related to one of
    its direct clients.
    Default is "1". Negative and zero values are not supported.

* *znode.container.checkIntervalMs* :
    (Java system property only)
    **New in 3.6.0:** The
    time interval in milliseconds for each check of candidate container
    and ttl nodes. Default is "60000".

* *znode.container.maxPerMinute* :
    (Java system property only)
    **New in 3.6.0:** The
    maximum number of container and ttl nodes that can be deleted per
    minute. This prevents herding during container deletion.
    Default is "10000".

* *znode.container.maxNeverUsedIntervalMs* :
    (Java system property only)
    **New in 3.6.0:** The
    maximum interval in milliseconds that a container that has never had
    any children is retained. Should be long enough for your client to
    create the container, do any needed work and then create children.
    Default is "0" which is used to indicate that containers
    that have never had any children are never deleted.

<a name="sc_debug_observability_config"></a>

#### Debug Observability Configurations

**New in 3.6.0:** The following options are introduced to make zookeeper easier to debug.

* *zookeeper.messageTracker.BufferSize* :
    (Java system property only)
    Controls the maximum number of messages stored in **MessageTracker**. Value should be positive
    integers. The default value is 10. **MessageTracker** is introduced in **3.6.0** to record the
    last set of messages between a server (follower or observer) and a leader, when a server
    disconnects with leader. These set of messages will then be dumped to zookeeper's log file,
    and will help reconstruct the state of the servers at the time of the disconnection and
    will be useful for debugging purpose.

* *zookeeper.messageTracker.Enabled* :
    (Java system property only)
    When set to "true", will enable **MessageTracker** to track and record messages. Default value
    is "false".

<a name="sc_adminserver_config"></a>

#### AdminServer configuration

**New in 3.7.1:** The following
options are used to configure the [AdminServer](#sc_adminserver).

* *admin.forceHttps* :
  (Java system property: **zookeeper.admin.forceHttps**)
  Force AdminServer to use SSL, thus allowing only HTTPS traffic.
  Defaults to disabled.
  Overwrites **admin.portUnification** settings.

**New in 3.6.0:** The following
options are used to configure the [AdminServer](#sc_adminserver).

* *admin.portUnification* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.admin.portUnification**)
    Enable the admin port to accept both HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
    Defaults to disabled.

**New in 3.5.0:** The following
options are used to configure the [AdminServer](#sc_adminserver).

* *admin.enableServer* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.admin.enableServer**)
    Set to "false" to disable the AdminServer.  By default the
    AdminServer is enabled.

* *admin.serverAddress* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.admin.serverAddress**)
    The address the embedded Jetty server listens on. Defaults to 0.0.0.0.

* *admin.serverPort* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.admin.serverPort**)
    The port the embedded Jetty server listens on.  Defaults to 8080.

* *admin.idleTimeout* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.admin.idleTimeout**)
    Set the maximum idle time in milliseconds that a connection can wait
    before sending or receiving data. Defaults to 30000 ms.

* *admin.commandURL* :
    (Java system property: **zookeeper.admin.commandURL**)
    The URL for listing and issuing commands relative to the
    root URL.  Defaults to "/commands".

### Metrics Providers

**New in 3.6.0:** The following options are used to configure metrics.

 By default ZooKeeper server exposes useful metrics using the [AdminServer](#sc_adminserver).
 and [Four Letter Words](#sc_4lw) interface.

 Since 3.6.0 you can configure a different Metrics Provider, that exports metrics
 to your favourite system.

 Since 3.6.0 ZooKeeper binary package bundles an integration with [Prometheus.io](https://prometheus.io)

* *metricsProvider.className* :
    Set to "org.apache.zookeeper.metrics.prometheus.PrometheusMetricsProvider" to
    enable Prometheus.io exporter.

* *metricsProvider.httpPort* :
    Prometheus.io exporter will start a Jetty server and bind to this port, it default to 7000.
    Prometheus end point will be http://hostname:httPort/metrics.

* *metricsProvider.exportJvmInfo* :
    If this property is set to **true** Prometheus.io will export useful metrics about the JVM.
    The default is true.

<a name="Communication+using+the+Netty+framework"></a>

### Communication using the Netty framework

[Netty](http://netty.io)
is an NIO based client/server communication framework, it
simplifies (over NIO being used directly) many of the
complexities of network level communication for java
applications. Additionally the Netty framework has built
in support for encryption (SSL) and authentication
(certificates). These are optional features and can be
turned on or off individually.

In versions 3.5+, a ZooKeeper server can use Netty
instead of NIO (default option) by setting the environment
variable **zookeeper.serverCnxnFactory**
to **org.apache.zookeeper.server.NettyServerCnxnFactory**;
for the client, set **zookeeper.clientCnxnSocket**
to **org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxnSocketNetty**.

<a name="Quorum+TLS"></a>

#### Quorum TLS

*New in 3.5.5*

Based on the Netty Framework ZooKeeper ensembles can be set up
to use TLS encryption in their communication channels. This section
describes how to set up encryption on the quorum communication.

Please note that Quorum TLS encapsulates securing both leader election
and quorum communication protocols.

1. Create SSL keystore JKS to store local credentials

One keystore should be created for each ZK instance.

In this example we generate a self-signed certificate and store it
together with the private key in `keystore.jks`. This is suitable for
testing purposes, but you probably need an official certificate to sign
your keys in a production environment.

Please note that the alias (`-alias`) and the distinguished name (`-dname`)
must match the hostname of the machine that is associated with, otherwise
hostname verification won't work.

```
keytool -genkeypair -alias $(hostname -f) -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -dname "cn=$(hostname -f)" -keypass password -keystore keystore.jks -storepass password
```

2. Extract the signed public key (certificate) from keystore

*This step might only necessary for self-signed certificates.*

```
keytool -exportcert -alias $(hostname -f) -keystore keystore.jks -file $(hostname -f).cer -rfc
```

3. Create SSL truststore JKS containing certificates of all ZooKeeper instances

The same truststore (storing all accepted certs) should be shared on
participants of the ensemble. You need to use different aliases to store
multiple certificates in the same truststore. Name of the aliases doesn't matter.

```
keytool -importcert -alias [host1..3] -file [host1..3].cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password
```

4. You need to use `NettyServerCnxnFactory` as serverCnxnFactory, because SSL is not supported by NIO.
Add the following configuration settings to your `zoo.cfg` config file:

```
sslQuorum=true
serverCnxnFactory=org.apache.zookeeper.server.NettyServerCnxnFactory
ssl.quorum.keyStore.location=/path/to/keystore.jks
ssl.quorum.keyStore.password=password
ssl.quorum.trustStore.location=/path/to/truststore.jks
ssl.quorum.trustStore.password=password
```

5. Verify in the logs that your ensemble is running on TLS:

```
INFO  [main:QuorumPeer@1789] - Using TLS encrypted quorum communication
INFO  [main:QuorumPeer@1797] - Port unification disabled
...
INFO  [QuorumPeerListener:QuorumCnxManager$Listener@877] - Creating TLS-only quorum server socket
```

<a name="Upgrading+existing+nonTLS+cluster"></a>

#### Upgrading existing non-TLS cluster with no downtime

*New in 3.5.5*

Here are the steps needed to upgrade an already running ZooKeeper ensemble
to TLS without downtime by taking advantage of port unification functionality.

1. Create the necessary keystores and truststores for all ZK participants as described in the previous section

2. Add the following config settings and restart the first node

```
sslQuorum=false
portUnification=true
serverCnxnFactory=org.apache.zookeeper.server.NettyServerCnxnFactory
ssl.quorum.keyStore.location=/path/to/keystore.jks
ssl.quorum.keyStore.password=password
ssl.quorum.trustStore.location=/path/to/truststore.jks
ssl.quorum.trustStore.password=password
```

Note that TLS is not yet enabled, but we turn on port unification.

3. Repeat step #2 on the remaining nodes. Verify that you see the following entries in the logs:

```
INFO  [main:QuorumPeer@1791] - Using insecure (non-TLS) quorum communication
INFO  [main:QuorumPeer@1797] - Port unification enabled
...
INFO  [QuorumPeerListener:QuorumCnxManager$Listener@874] - Creating TLS-enabled quorum server socket
```

You should also double check after each node restart that the quorum become healthy again.

4. Enable Quorum TLS on each node and do rolling restart:

```
sslQuorum=true
portUnification=true
```

5. Once you verified that your entire ensemble is running on TLS, you could disable port unification
and do another rolling restart

```
sslQuorum=true
portUnification=false
```


<a name="sc_zkCommands"></a>

### ZooKeeper Commands

<a name="sc_4lw"></a>

#### The Four Letter Words

ZooKeeper responds to a small set of commands. Each command is
composed of four letters. You issue the commands to ZooKeeper via telnet
or nc, at the client port.

Three of the more interesting commands: "stat" gives some
general information about the server and connected clients,
while "srvr" and "cons" give extended details on server and
connections respectively.

**New in 3.5.3:**
Four Letter Words need to be explicitly white listed before using.
Please refer **4lw.commands.whitelist**
described in [cluster configuration section](#sc_clusterOptions) for details.
Moving forward, Four Letter Words will be deprecated, please use
[AdminServer](#sc_adminserver) instead.

* *conf* :
    **New in 3.3.0:** Print
    details about serving configuration.

* *cons* :
    **New in 3.3.0:** List
    full connection/session details for all clients connected
    to this server. Includes information on numbers of packets
    received/sent, session id, operation latencies, last
    operation performed, etc...

* *crst* :
    **New in 3.3.0:** Reset
    connection/session statistics for all connections.

* *dump* :
    Lists the outstanding sessions and ephemeral nodes.

* *envi* :
    Print details about serving environment

* *ruok* :
    Tests if server is running in a non-error state. The server
    will respond with imok if it is running. Otherwise it will not
    respond at all.
    A response of "imok" does not necessarily indicate that the
    server has joined the quorum, just that the server process is active
    and bound to the specified client port. Use "stat" for details on
    state wrt quorum and client connection information.

* *srst* :
    Reset server statistics.

* *srvr* :
    **New in 3.3.0:** Lists
    full details for the server.

* *stat* :
    Lists brief details for the server and connected
    clients.

* *wchs* :
    **New in 3.3.0:** Lists
    brief information on watches for the server.

* *wchc* :
    **New in 3.3.0:** Lists
    detailed information on watches for the server, by
    session.  This outputs a list of sessions(connections)
    with associated watches (paths). Note, depending on the
    number of watches this operation may be expensive (ie
    impact server performance), use it carefully.

* *dirs* :
    **New in 3.5.1:**
    Shows the total size of snapshot and log files in bytes

* *wchp* :
    **New in 3.3.0:** Lists
    detailed information on watches for the server, by path.
    This outputs a list of paths (znodes) with associated
    sessions. Note, depending on the number of watches this
    operation may be expensive (ie impact server performance),
    use it carefully.

* *mntr* :
    **New in 3.4.0:** Outputs a list
    of variables that could be used for monitoring the health of the cluster.


    $ echo mntr | nc localhost 2185
                  zk_version  3.4.0
                  zk_avg_latency  0.7561              - be account to four decimal places
                  zk_max_latency  0
                  zk_min_latency  0
                  zk_packets_received 70
                  zk_packets_sent 69
                  zk_outstanding_requests 0
                  zk_server_state leader
                  zk_znode_count   4
                  zk_watch_count  0
                  zk_ephemerals_count 0
                  zk_approximate_data_size    27
                  zk_followers    4                   - only exposed by the Leader
                  zk_synced_followers 4               - only exposed by the Leader
                  zk_pending_syncs    0               - only exposed by the Leader
                  zk_open_file_descriptor_count 23    - only available on Unix platforms
                  zk_max_file_descriptor_count 1024   - only available on Unix platforms


The output is compatible with java properties format and the content
may change over time (new keys added). Your scripts should expect changes.
ATTENTION: Some of the keys are platform specific and some of the keys are only exported by the Leader.
The output contains multiple lines with the following format:


    key \t value


* *isro* :
    **New in 3.4.0:** Tests if
    server is running in read-only mode.  The server will respond with
    "ro" if in read-only mode or "rw" if not in read-only mode.

* *hash* :
    **New in 3.6.0:**
    Return the latest history of the tree digest associated with zxid.

* *gtmk* :
    Gets the current trace mask as a 64-bit signed long value in
    decimal format.  See `stmk` for an explanation of
    the possible values.

* *stmk* :
    Sets the current trace mask.  The trace mask is 64 bits,
    where each bit enables or disables a specific category of trace
    logging on the server.  Log4J must be configured to enable
    `TRACE` level first in order to see trace logging
    messages.  The bits of the trace mask correspond to the following
    trace logging categories.

    | Trace Mask Bit Values |                     |
    |-----------------------|---------------------|
    | 0b0000000000 | Unused, reserved for future use. |
    | 0b0000000010 | Logs client requests, excluding ping requests. |
    | 0b0000000100 | Unused, reserved for future use. |
    | 0b0000001000 | Logs client ping requests. |
    | 0b0000010000 | Logs packets received from the quorum peer that is the current leader, excluding ping requests. |
    | 0b0000100000 | Logs addition, removal and validation of client sessions. |
    | 0b0001000000 | Logs delivery of watch events to client sessions. |
    | 0b0010000000 | Logs ping packets received from the quorum peer that is the current leader. |
    | 0b0100000000 | Unused, reserved for future use. |
    | 0b1000000000 | Unused, reserved for future use. |

    All remaining bits in the 64-bit value are unused and
    reserved for future use.  Multiple trace logging categories are
    specified by calculating the bitwise OR of the documented values.
    The default trace mask is 0b0100110010.  Thus, by default, trace
    logging includes client requests, packets received from the
    leader and sessions.
    To set a different trace mask, send a request containing the
    `stmk` four-letter word followed by the trace
    mask represented as a 64-bit signed long value.  This example uses
    the Perl `pack` function to construct a trace
    mask that enables all trace logging categories described above and
    convert it to a 64-bit signed long value with big-endian byte
    order.  The result is appended to `stmk` and sent
    to the server using netcat.  The server responds with the new
    trace mask in decimal format.


    $ perl -e "print 'stmk', pack('q>', 0b0011111010)" | nc localhost 2181
    250


Here's an example of the **ruok**
command:


    $ echo ruok | nc 127.0.0.1 5111
        imok


<a name="sc_adminserver"></a>

#### The AdminServer

**New in 3.5.0:** The AdminServer is
an embedded Jetty server that provides an HTTP interface to the four
letter word commands.  By default, the server is started on port 8080,
and commands are issued by going to the URL "/commands/\[command name]",
e.g., http://localhost:8080/commands/stat.  The command response is
returned as JSON.  Unlike the original protocol, commands are not
restricted to four-letter names, and commands can have multiple names;
for instance, "stmk" can also be referred to as "set_trace_mask".  To
view a list of all available commands, point a browser to the URL
/commands (e.g., http://localhost:8080/commands).  See the [AdminServer configuration options](#sc_adminserver_config)
for how to change the port and URLs.

The AdminServer is enabled by default, but can be disabled by either:

* Setting the zookeeper.admin.enableServer system
  property to false.
* Removing Jetty from the classpath.  (This option is
  useful if you would like to override ZooKeeper's jetty
  dependency.)

Note that the TCP four letter word interface is still available if
the AdminServer is disabled.

Available commands include:

* *connection_stat_reset/crst*:
    Reset all client connection statistics.
    No new fields returned.

* *configuration/conf/config* :
    Print basic details about serving configuration, e.g.
    client port, absolute path to data directory.

* *connections/cons* :
    Information on client connections to server.
    Note, depending on the number of client connections this operation may be expensive
    (i.e. impact server performance).
    Returns "connections", a list of connection info objects.

* *hash*:
    Txn digests in the historical digest list.
    One is recorded every 128 transactions.
    Returns "digests", a list to transaction digest objects.

* *dirs* :
    Information on logfile directory and snapshot directory
    size in bytes.
    Returns "datadir_size" and "logdir_size".

* *dump* :
    Information on session expirations and ephemerals.
    Note, depending on the number of global sessions and ephemerals
    this operation may be expensive (i.e. impact server performance).
    Returns "expiry_time_to_session_ids" and "session_id_to_ephemeral_paths" as maps.

* *environment/env/envi* :
    All defined environment variables.
    Returns each as its own field.

* *get_trace_mask/gtmk* :
    The current trace mask. Read-only version of *set_trace_mask*.
    See the description of the four letter command *stmk* for
    more details.
    Returns "tracemask".

* *initial_configuration/icfg* :
    Print the text of the configuration file used to start the peer.
    Returns "initial_configuration".

* *is_read_only/isro* :
    A true/false if this server is in read-only mode.
    Returns "read_only".

* *last_snapshot/lsnp* :
    Information of the last snapshot that zookeeper server has finished saving to disk.
    If called during the initial time period between the server starting up
    and the server finishing saving its first snapshot, the command returns the
    information of the snapshot read when starting up the server.
    Returns "zxid" and "timestamp", the latter using a time unit of seconds.

* *leader/lead* :
    If the ensemble is configured in quorum mode then emits the current leader
    status of the peer and the current leader location.
    Returns "is_leader", "leader_id", and "leader_ip".

* *monitor/mntr* :
    Emits a wide variety of useful info for monitoring.
    Includes performance stats, information about internal queues, and
    summaries of the data tree (among other things).
    Returns each as its own field.

* *observer_connection_stat_reset/orst* :
    Reset all observer connection statistics. Companion command to *observers*.
    No new fields returned.

* *ruok* :
    No-op command, check if the server is running.
    A response does not necessarily indicate that the
    server has joined the quorum, just that the admin server
    is active and bound to the specified port.
    No new fields returned.

* *set_trace_mask/stmk* :
    Sets the trace mask (as such, it requires a parameter).
    Write version of *get_trace_mask*.
    See the description of the four letter command *stmk* for
    more details.
    Returns "tracemask".

* *server_stats/srvr* :
    Server information.
    Returns multiple fields giving a brief overview of server state.

* *stats/stat* :
    Same as *server_stats* but also returns the "connections" field (see *connections*
    for details).
    Note, depending on the number of client connections this operation may be expensive
    (i.e. impact server performance).

* *stat_reset/srst* :
    Resets server statistics. This is a subset of the information returned
    by *server_stats* and *stats*.
    No new fields returned.

* *observers/obsr* :
    Information on observer connections to server.
    Always available on a Leader, available on a Follower if its
    acting as a learner master.
    Returns "synced_observers" (int) and "observers" (list of per-observer properties).

* *system_properties/sysp* :
    All defined system properties.
    Returns each as its own field.

* *voting_view* :
    Provides the current voting members in the ensemble.
    Returns "current_config" as a map.

* *watches/wchc* :
    Watch information aggregated by session.
    Note, depending on the number of watches this operation may be expensive
    (i.e. impact server performance).
    Returns "session_id_to_watched_paths" as a map.

* *watches_by_path/wchp* :
    Watch information aggregated by path.
    Note, depending on the number of watches this operation may be expensive
    (i.e. impact server performance).
    Returns "path_to_session_ids" as a map.

* *watch_summary/wchs* :
    Summarized watch information.
    Returns "num_total_watches", "num_paths", and "num_connections".

* *zabstate* :
    The current phase of Zab protocol that peer is running and whether it is a
    voting member.
    Peers can be in one of these phases: ELECTION, DISCOVERY, SYNCHRONIZATION, BROADCAST.
    Returns fields "voting" and "zabstate".


<a name="sc_dataFileManagement"></a>

### Data File Management

ZooKeeper stores its data in a data directory and its transaction
log in a transaction log directory. By default these two directories are
the same. The server can (and should) be configured to store the
transaction log files in a separate directory than the data files.
Throughput increases and latency decreases when transaction logs reside
on a dedicated log devices.

<a name="The+Data+Directory"></a>

#### The Data Directory

This directory has two or three files in it:

* *myid* - contains a single integer in
  human readable ASCII text that represents the server id.
* *initialize* - presence indicates lack of
  data tree is expected. Cleaned up once data tree is created.
* *snapshot.<zxid>* - holds the fuzzy
  snapshot of a data tree.

Each ZooKeeper server has a unique id. This id is used in two
places: the *myid* file and the configuration file.
The *myid* file identifies the server that
corresponds to the given data directory. The configuration file lists
the contact information for each server identified by its server id.
When a ZooKeeper server instance starts, it reads its id from the
*myid* file and then, using that id, reads from the
configuration file, looking up the port on which it should
listen.

The *snapshot* files stored in the data
directory are fuzzy snapshots in the sense that during the time the
ZooKeeper server is taking the snapshot, updates are occurring to the
data tree. The suffix of the *snapshot* file names
is the _zxid_, the ZooKeeper transaction id, of the
last committed transaction at the start of the snapshot. Thus, the
snapshot includes a subset of the updates to the data tree that
occurred while the snapshot was in process. The snapshot, then, may
not correspond to any data tree that actually existed, and for this
reason we refer to it as a fuzzy snapshot. Still, ZooKeeper can
recover using this snapshot because it takes advantage of the
idempotent nature of its updates. By replaying the transaction log
against fuzzy snapshots ZooKeeper gets the state of the system at the
end of the log.

<a name="The+Log+Directory"></a>

#### The Log Directory

The Log Directory contains the ZooKeeper transaction logs.
Before any update takes place, ZooKeeper ensures that the transaction
that represents the update is written to non-volatile storage. A new
log file is started when the number of transactions written to the
current log file reaches a (variable) threshold. The threshold is
computed using the same parameter which influences the frequency of
snapshotting (see snapCount and snapSizeLimitInKb above). The log file's
suffix is the first zxid written to that log.

<a name="sc_filemanagement"></a>

#### File Management

The format of snapshot and log files does not change between
standalone ZooKeeper servers and different configurations of
replicated ZooKeeper servers. Therefore, you can pull these files from
a running replicated ZooKeeper server to a development machine with a
stand-alone ZooKeeper server for troubleshooting.

Using older log and snapshot files, you can look at the previous
state of ZooKeeper servers and even restore that state. The
LogFormatter class allows an administrator to look at the transactions
in a log.

The ZooKeeper server creates snapshot and log files, but
never deletes them. The retention policy of the data and log
files is implemented outside of the ZooKeeper server. The
server itself only needs the latest complete fuzzy snapshot, all log
files following it, and the last log file preceding it.  The latter
requirement is necessary to include updates which happened after this
snapshot was started but went into the existing log file at that time.
This is possible because snapshotting and rolling over of logs
proceed somewhat independently in ZooKeeper. See the
[maintenance](#sc_maintenance) section in
this document for more details on setting a retention policy
and maintenance of ZooKeeper storage.

###### Note
>The data stored in these files is not encrypted. In the case of
storing sensitive data in ZooKeeper, necessary measures need to be
taken to prevent unauthorized access. Such measures are external to
ZooKeeper (e.g., control access to the files) and depend on the
individual settings in which it is being deployed.

<a name="Recovery+-+TxnLogToolkit"></a>

#### Recovery - TxnLogToolkit
More details can be found in [this](http://zookeeper.apache.org/doc/current/zookeeperTools.html#zkTxnLogToolkit)

<a name="sc_commonProblems"></a>

### Things to Avoid

Here are some common problems you can avoid by configuring
ZooKeeper correctly:

* *inconsistent lists of servers* :
    The list of ZooKeeper servers used by the clients must match
    the list of ZooKeeper servers that each ZooKeeper server has.
    Things work okay if the client list is a subset of the real list,
    but things will really act strange if clients have a list of
    ZooKeeper servers that are in different ZooKeeper clusters. Also,
    the server lists in each Zookeeper server configuration file
    should be consistent with one another.

* *incorrect placement of transaction log* :
    The most performance critical part of ZooKeeper is the
    transaction log. ZooKeeper syncs transactions to media before it
    returns a response. A dedicated transaction log device is key to
    consistent good performance. Putting the log on a busy device will
    adversely affect performance. If you only have one storage device,
    increase the snapCount so that snapshot files are generated less often;
    it does not eliminate the problem, but it makes more resources available
    for the transaction log.

* *incorrect Java heap size* :
    You should take special care to set your Java max heap size
    correctly. In particular, you should not create a situation in
    which ZooKeeper swaps to disk. The disk is death to ZooKeeper.
    Everything is ordered, so if processing one request swaps the
    disk, all other queued requests will probably do the same. the
    disk. DON'T SWAP.
    Be conservative in your estimates: if you have 4G of RAM, do
    not set the Java max heap size to 6G or even 4G. For example, it
    is more likely you would use a 3G heap for a 4G machine, as the
    operating system and the cache also need memory. The best and only
    recommend practice for estimating the heap size your system needs
    is to run load tests, and then make sure you are well below the
    usage limit that would cause the system to swap.

* *Publicly accessible deployment* :
    A ZooKeeper ensemble is expected to operate in a trusted computing environment.
    It is thus recommended to deploy ZooKeeper behind a firewall.

<a name="sc_bestPractices"></a>

### Best Practices

For best results, take note of the following list of good
Zookeeper practices:

For multi-tenant installations see the [section](zookeeperProgrammers.html#ch_zkSessions)
detailing ZooKeeper "chroot" support, this can be very useful
when deploying many applications/services interfacing to a
single ZooKeeper cluster.
