Operator And Admin Tasks

This guide covers the small set of operator-facing helpers exposed through Aerospike. These commands are useful for readiness checks, node inspection, info probes, index cleanup, truncation, and connection-pool warm-up. They are not a replacement for the full Aerospike admin tools.

Discover Active Nodes

node_names/1 returns the active node names from the client's published cluster view. Use those names when a command accepts node: node_name or when you need to call info_node/4.

{:ok, node_names} = Aerospike.node_names(:aerospike)

{:ok, nodes} = Aerospike.nodes(:aerospike)

Enum.each(nodes, fn %{name: name, host: host, port: port} ->
  {name, host, port}
end)

The view is populated by the client tend cycle. Check Aerospike.Cluster.ready?/1 before treating the view as routable.

Info Commands

info/3 sends one info command to one active node selected by the client. info_node/4 sends the same command to a specific active node. Unknown or stale node names return an :invalid_node error instead of falling back to a different node.

{:ok, namespaces} = Aerospike.info(:aerospike, "namespaces")
{:ok, [node_name | _]} = Aerospike.node_names(:aerospike)
{:ok, statistics} = Aerospike.info_node(:aerospike, node_name, "statistics")

Both helpers use pool_checkout_timeout: for the connection-pool checkout. The info command itself is a server command string; do not build it from untrusted input.

{:ok, response} =
  Aerospike.info_node(:aerospike, node_name, "sets/test/users",
    pool_checkout_timeout: 2_000
  )

Pool Warm-Up

warm_up/2 verifies that active node pools can hand out connections through the normal checkout path. It is useful after startup when an application wants to pay connection setup cost before accepting traffic.

true = Aerospike.Cluster.ready?(:aerospike)
{:ok, warmed} = Aerospike.warm_up(:aerospike, count: 2)

Enum.each(warmed, fn {node_name, count} ->
  {node_name, count}
end)

:count defaults to the configured pool size and is capped at that size. :pool_checkout_timeout controls each checkout attempt.

Truncate Data

truncate/3 removes all records in a namespace. truncate/4 narrows the operation to one set. Both helpers send one truncate info command and the server distributes the truncate across the cluster.

:ok = Aerospike.truncate(:aerospike, "test", "scratch")

Use before: to truncate only records older than a last-update cutoff:

cutoff = DateTime.add(DateTime.utc_now(), -3600, :second)
:ok = Aerospike.truncate(:aerospike, "test", "scratch", before: cutoff)

Truncate is destructive. Prefer a dedicated set or a time cutoff for cleanup jobs so production data is not removed accidentally.

Drop Secondary Indexes

Drop an index by namespace and index name:

:ok = Aerospike.drop_index(:aerospike, "test", "users_age_idx")

Index creation returns an Aerospike.IndexTask because the server builds the index asynchronously. Dropping an index is exposed as a direct admin operation; callers that need to observe completion should issue an appropriate follow-up info probe for their deployment.

{:ok, sindex} = Aerospike.info(:aerospike, "sindex/test")

Cleanup Pattern

Tests, one-off jobs, and maintenance tasks commonly combine these helpers:

with true <- Aerospike.Cluster.ready?(:aerospike),
     {:ok, [node_name | _]} <- Aerospike.node_names(:aerospike),
     {:ok, _stats} <- Aerospike.info_node(:aerospike, node_name, "statistics"),
     :ok <- Aerospike.truncate(:aerospike, "test", "scratch"),
     :ok <- Aerospike.drop_index(:aerospike, "test", "scratch_created_idx") do
  :ok
end

For full return shapes and validation rules, see Aerospike.info/3, Aerospike.info_node/4, Aerospike.nodes/1, Aerospike.node_names/1, Aerospike.warm_up/2, Aerospike.truncate/3, Aerospike.truncate/4, and Aerospike.drop_index/4.