Skip to content

External Payload Storage

Warning

The external payload storage is currently only implemented to be used to by the Java client. Client libraries in other languages need to be modified to enable this.
Contributions are welcomed.

Context

Conductor can be configured to enforce barriers on the size of workflow and task payloads for both input and output.
These barriers can be used as safeguards to prevent the usage of conductor as a data persistence system and to reduce the pressure on its datastore.

Barriers

Conductor typically applies two kinds of barriers:

  • Soft Barrier
  • Hard Barrier

Soft Barrier

The soft barrier is used to alleviate pressure on the conductor datastore. In some special workflow use-cases, the size of the payload is warranted enough to be stored as part of the workflow execution.
In such cases, conductor externalizes the storage of such payloads to S3 and uploads/downloads to/from S3 as needed during the execution. This process is completely transparent to the user/worker process.

Hard Barrier

The hard barriers are enforced to safeguard the conductor backend from the pressure of having to persist and deal with voluminous data which is not essential for workflow execution. In such cases, conductor will reject such payloads and will terminate/fail the workflow execution with the reasonForIncompletion set to an appropriate error message detailing the payload size.

Usage

Barriers setup

Set the following properties to the desired values in the JVM system properties:

Property Description default value
conductor.app.workflowInputPayloadSizeThreshold Soft barrier for workflow input payload in KB 5120
conductor.app.maxWorkflowInputPayloadSizeThreshold Hard barrier for workflow input payload in KB 10240
conductor.app.workflowOutputPayloadSizeThreshold Soft barrier for workflow output payload in KB 5120
conductor.app.maxWorkflowOutputPayloadSizeThreshold Hard barrier for workflow output payload in KB 10240
conductor.app.taskInputPayloadSizeThreshold Soft barrier for task input payload in KB 3072
conductor.app.maxTaskInputPayloadSizeThreshold Hard barrier for task input payload in KB 10240
conductor.app.taskOutputPayloadSizeThreshold Soft barrier for task output payload in KB 3072
conductor.app.maxTaskOutputPayloadSizeThreshold Hard barrier for task output payload in KB 10240

Amazon S3

Conductor provides an implementation of Amazon S3 used to externalize large payload storage.
Set the following property in the JVM system properties:

conductor.external-payload-storage.type=S3

Note

This implementation assumes that S3 access is configured on the instance.

Set the following properties to the desired values in the JVM system properties:

Property Description default value
conductor.external-payload-storage.s3.bucketName S3 bucket where the payloads will be stored
conductor.external-payload-storage.s3.signedUrlExpirationDuration The expiration time in seconds of the signed url for the payload 5

The payloads will be stored in the bucket configured above in a UUID.json file at locations determined by the type of the payload. See here for information about how the object key is determined.

Azure Blob Storage

ProductLive provides an implementation of Azure Blob Storage used to externalize large payload storage.

To build conductor with azure blob feature read the README.md in azureblob-storage module

Note

This implementation assumes that you have an Azure Blob Storage account's connection string or SAS Token. If you want signed url to expired you must specify a Connection String.

Set the following properties to the desired values in the JVM system properties:

Property Description default value
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.connection_string Azure Blob Storage connection string. Required to sign Url.
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.endpoint Azure Blob Storage endpoint. Optional if connection_string is set.
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.sas_token Azure Blob Storage SAS Token. Must have permissions Read and Write on Resource Object on Service Blob. Optional if connection_string is set.
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.container_name Azure Blob Storage container where the payloads will be stored conductor-payloads
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.signedurlexpirationseconds The expiration time in seconds of the signed url for the payload 5
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.workflow_input_path Path prefix where workflows input will be stored with an random UUID filename workflow/input/
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.workflow_output_path Path prefix where workflows output will be stored with an random UUID filename workflow/output/
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.task_input_path Path prefix where tasks input will be stored with an random UUID filename task/input/
workflow.external.payload.storage.azure_blob.task_output_path Path prefix where tasks output will be stored with an random UUID filename task/output/

The payloads will be stored as done in Amazon S3.

PostgreSQL Storage

Frinx provides an implementation of PostgreSQL Storage used to externalize large payload storage.

Note

This implementation assumes that you have an PostgreSQL database server with all required credentials.

Set the following properties to your application.properties:

Property Description default value
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.conductor-url URL, that can be used to pull the json configurations, that will be downloaded from PostgreSQL to the conductor server. For example: for local development it is {{ server_host }} ""
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.url PostgreSQL database connection URL. Required to connect to database.
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.username Username for connecting to PostgreSQL database. Required to connect to database.
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.password Password for connecting to PostgreSQL database. Required to connect to database.
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.table-name The PostgreSQL schema and table name where the payloads will be stored external.external_payload
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.max-data-rows Maximum count of data rows in PostgreSQL database. After overcoming this limit, the oldest data will be deleted. Long.MAX_VALUE (9223372036854775807L)
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.max-data-days Maximum count of days of data age in PostgreSQL database. After overcoming limit, the oldest data will be deleted. 0
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.max-data-months Maximum count of months of data age in PostgreSQL database. After overcoming limit, the oldest data will be deleted. 0
conductor.external-payload-storage.postgres.max-data-years Maximum count of years of data age in PostgreSQL database. After overcoming limit, the oldest data will be deleted. 1

The maximum date age for fields in the database will be: years + months + days
The payloads will be stored in PostgreSQL database with key (externalPayloadPath) UUID.json and you can generate URI for this data using external-postgres-payload-resource rest controller.
To make this URI work correctly, you must correctly set the conductor-url property.