Add ability to balance nodes across nodes

[chiappone]

It would be great to have the ability to balance the ec2 nodes instead of just specifying the ec2 placement. The script would select different zones for each node that way having a better availability across different zones.

[joaquincasares]

Hello Chiappone,

Yes, this has been discussed from time to time, but in doing so, more code would have to be changed in the DataStax AMI (https://github.com/riptano/ComboAMI) to allow for offset tokens, then a refactoring of the reflector.php in order to link the two reservation-id's (probably easiest if we allow for self generated reservation-ids on the AMI's end).

At that point, we can have the launcher launch two different "clusters" then match them together as two different datacenters.

Overall, it wouldn't be too much of a headache, but adds to the operational complexity backend.

We've more-less opted for an image/launcher that's easy to handle without too many options that gives a great, real-world setup of Cassandra. Having the launcher support multiple availability zones seems like icing on the cake and moves more into production territory than dev territory, which was not the intended use.

If anyone's up to do the work, I'll be glad to look it over and merge both sets of patches, but unfortunately I don't have enough bandwidth right now for this added feature.

If you do have any other recommendations, however, feel free to open another ticket.

Thanks and sorry I couldn't help any further!
Joaquin

[chiappone]

Ok thanks