How to span a ConcurrentDictionary across load-balancer servers when using SignalR hub with Redis - asp.net-core

Question

I have ASP.NET Core web application setup with SignalR scaled-out with Redis.
Using the built-in groups works fine:
Clients.Group("Group_Name");
and survives multiple load-balancers. I'm assuming that SignalR persists those groups in Redis automatically so all servers know what groups we have and who are subscribed to them.
However, in my situation, I can't just rely on Groups (or Users), as there is no way to map the connectionId (Say when overloading OnDisconnectedAsync and only the connection id is known) back to its group, and you always need the Group_Name to identify the group. I need that to identify which part of the group is online, so when OnDisconnectedAsync is called, I know which group this guy belongs to, and on which side of the conversation he is.
I've done some research, and they all suggested (including Microsoft Docs) to use something like:
static readonly ConcurrentDictionary<string, ConversationInformation> connectionMaps;
in the hub itself.
Now, this is a great solution (and thread-safe), except that it exists only on one of the load-balancer server's memory, and the other servers have a different instance of this dictionary.
The question is, do I have to persist connectionMaps manually? Using Redis for example?
Something like:
public class ChatHub : Hub
{
static readonly ConcurrentDictionary<string, ConversationInformation> connectionMaps;
ChatHub(IDistributedCache distributedCache)
{
connectionMaps = distributedCache.Get("ConnectionMaps");
/// I think connectionMaps should not be static any more.
}
}
and if yes, is it thread-safe? if no, can you suggest a better solution that works with Load-Balancing?

Answer 1

Have been battling with the same issue on this end. What I've come up with is to persist the collections within the redis cache while utilising a StackExchange.Redis.IDatabaseAsync alongside locks to handle concurrency.
This unfortunately makes the entire process sync but couldn't quite figure a way around this.
Here's the core of what I'm doing, this attains a lock and return back a deserialised collection from the cache
private async Task<ConcurrentDictionary<int, HubMedia>> GetMediaAttributes(bool requireLock)
{
if(requireLock)
{
var retryTime = 0;
try
{
while (!await _redisDatabase.LockTakeAsync(_mediaAttributesLock, _lockValue, _defaultLockDuration))
{
//wait till we can get a lock on the data, 100ms by default
await Task.Delay(100);
retryTime += 10;
if (retryTime > _defaultLockDuration.TotalMilliseconds)
{
_logger.LogError("Failed to get Media Attributes");
return null;
}
}
}
catch(TaskCanceledException e)
{
_logger.LogError("Failed to take lock within the default 5 second wait time " + e);
return null;
}
}
var mediaAttributes = await _redisDatabase.StringGetAsync(MEDIA_ATTRIBUTES_LIST);
if (!mediaAttributes.HasValue)
{
return new ConcurrentDictionary<int, HubMedia>();
}
return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ConcurrentDictionary<int, HubMedia>>(mediaAttributes);
}
Updating the collection like so after I've done manipulating it
private async Task<bool> UpdateCollection(string redisCollectionKey, object collection, string lockKey)
{
var success = false;
try
{
success = await _redisDatabase.StringSetAsync(redisCollectionKey, JsonConvert.SerializeObject(collection, new JsonSerializerSettings
{
ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore
}));
}
finally
{
await _redisDatabase.LockReleaseAsync(lockKey, _lockValue);
}
return success;
}
and when I'm done I just ensure the lock is released for other instances to grab and use
private async Task ReleaseLock(string lockKey)
{
await _redisDatabase.LockReleaseAsync(lockKey, _lockValue);
}
Would be happy to hear if you find a better way of doing this. Struggled to find any documentation on scale out with data retention and sharing.