Orleans CosmosDB Providers

Orleans is a framework that provides a straight-forward approach to building distributed high-scale computing applications, without the need to learn and apply complex concurrency or other scaling patterns.

Azure CosmosDB is Microsoft's globally distributed, multi-model database. It is a database for extremely low latency and massively scalable applications anywhere in the world, with native support for NoSQL.

Orleans.CosmosDB is a package that use Azure CosmosDB as a backend for Orleans providers like Cluster Membership, Grain State storage, Streaming and Reminders.

Installation

Installation is performed via NuGet

From Package Manager:

PS> Install-Package Orleans.Clustering.CosmosDB -prerelease

PS> Install-Package Orleans.Persistence.CosmosDB -prerelease

PS> Install-Package Orleans.Reminders.CosmosDB -prerelease

.Net CLI:

# dotnet add package Orleans.Clustering.CosmosDB -prerelease

# dotnet add package Orleans.Persistence.CosmosDB -prerelease

# dotnet add package Orleans.Reminders.CosmosDB -prerelease

Paket:

# paket add Orleans.Clustering.CosmosDB -prerelease

# paket add Orleans.Persistence.CosmosDB -prerelease

# paket add Orleans.Reminders.CosmosDB -prerelease

Configuration

It is not mandatory to use all the providers at once. Just pick the one you are interested in from the samples and you should be good as they don't depend on each other.

Silo

We need to configure the Orleans Silo with the below:

• Use .UseCosmosDBMembership() on ISiloHostBuilder to enable cluster membership.
• Use .AddAzureCosmosDBPersistence() on ClusterConfiguration to register the grain state persistence provider.
• Use .UseAzureCosmosDBPersistence() on ISiloHostBuilder to configure the grain state persistence provider.
• Use .AddAzureCosmosDBReminders() on ClusterConfiguration to register the reminders provider.
• Use .UseAzureCosmosDBReminders() on ISiloHostBuilder to configure the reminders provider.

Example

var siloConfig = new ClusterConfiguration();
siloConfig.AddAzureCosmosDBPersistence("myProvider"); //Register the persistence provider.
siloConfig.AddAzureCosmosDBReminders(); // Register the reminders provider.

var silo = new SiloHostBuilder()
    .UseConfiguration(siloConfig)
    .UseCosmosDBMembership() // Use CosmosDB as the cluster membership table.
    .UseAzureCosmosDBPersistence() // Configure CosmosDB persistence provider.
    .UseAzureCosmosDBReminders() // Configure CosmosDB reminders provider.
    .Build();
await silo.StartAsync();

Client

Now your client application needs to connect to the Orleans Cluster by using configuring the Gateway List Provider:

• Use .UseCosmosDBGatewayListProvider() on IClientBuilder.

Example

var clientConfig = new ClientConfiguration();

var client = new ClientBuilder()
    .UseConfiguration(clientConfig)
    .UseCosmosDBGatewayListProvider() // Use CosmosDB as the Gateway list provider.
    .Build();
    await client.Connect();

Great! Now you have Orleans configured to use Azure CosmosDB as the back storage for its providers!

Contributions

PRs and feedback are very welcome!