Sequencer total node count

Hi Team,

There is a total-node-count configured in sequencer. High Availability Usage — Canton 0.27.0 documentation

May I know the best practice of configuring this number? As the document mentioning “will be difficult to change in the future”, a client is puzzling what number should be entered.

Does it harm to put some big number like 1,000? Any bad impact if the number is too big in general, say performance, etc.?

Thanks in advance.

kc

Hi KC,

The maximum total-node-count that you can configure is 31. This is the maximum number of sequencer nodes supported by Canton’s HA database-based sequencer.

I don’t expect that setting total-node-count to 31 will cause performance issues, so I’d recommend using 31 when unsure how many sequencer nodes will be used in the future.

Thanks @Phoebe_Nichols for your prompt reply. Just curious: why isn’t it just set 31 if there are no impact in general, or even make it unconfigurable?

kc

We haven’t yet settled the debate on what the right setting is that will work for every deployment in the future. The current settings are derived from lab experiments yielding good results. But future improvements might change our opinion.

We acknowledge that the configuration option is an expert setting that shouldn’t be touched. Therefore, we recommend going with the tested default values and we’ll update the manual accordingly.