Skip to main content

How-To Guides

You know the task. A guide gives you the exact steps to complete it, the command output to expect at every checkpoint, and the production details that matter. No background theory, no tangential setup. Guides for starting a cluster, managing it with the REST API, diagnosing slow queries with EXPLAIN, configuring distribution zones, and securing client connections. Tested on a 3-node cluster.

Task-Focused15-30 min eachCheckpointed
Recommended Starting Point

Start a Cluster with Docker Compose

The fastest path to a running 3-node development cluster. One command, two minutes.

Foundational15 minignite3gridgain9
Start here

All Guides

Each guide solves a specific problem: start a cluster, manage it with the REST API, diagnose a slow query, configure distribution zones, or secure client connections. Published guides link directly to their content.

Platform
Category
Complexity
Guide

Choose a Partition Count for Your Workload

The default is 1,024. More partitions means finer rebalance granularity and more metadata overhead. Fewer means coarser rebalance and potential hot partitions. Walk through the decision for cluster sizes from 3 to 30 nodes and cache sizes from 1GB to 1TB.
Moderate|30 min
ignite2gridgain8data-modeling
Guide

Debug a Hot Partition

One node is pegged, the others are idle. Diagnose key skew, whether natural (timestamp keys, autoincrement keys) or accidental (a bug in the affinity mapper). Apply the fix: salt the key, change the affinity function, or redesign the schema.
Moderate|30 min
ignite2gridgain8operations
Guide

Encrypt Cluster Traffic with Istio mTLS on Kubernetes

Enforce mutual TLS across inter-node, thin-client, and external traffic with an Istio service mesh. No keystores, no SSL configuration on the cluster itself.
Complex|45 min
ignite2gridgain8security
Guide

Encrypt Inter-Node Cluster Traffic with Linkerd on Kubernetes

Encrypt discovery and communication traffic between cache nodes with Linkerd automatic mTLS. One annotation per pod, no keystores, no cluster configuration changes.
Moderate|30 min
ignite2gridgain8security

Looking for structured learning?

Tutorials teach skills step by step through a real cluster and the Music Store dataset. If you want to learn how the platform works rather than solve a specific task, start with the tutorials or follow a Foundations learning path.

Browse TutorialsView Learning Paths