12. Operations — Runtime Metrics · Graceful Drain · Readiness

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The documents that own this chapter's contract — owned by the common spec Runtime state query and operational diagnostics, Runtime metrics, and Graceful Drain & Handoff. The formal definition of each language's surface is owned by the per-language topology/monitoring public contract. This chapter focuses on usage — what you actually wire up and declare in an operational environment.

0. What It Provides

Once a service is in production, you need the following in addition to the event observation covered in the 11. Monitoring.

1. Metrics — see numbers like CCU, queue depth, and request latency on a dashboard.
2. Graceful drain — clean up a node being taken down for a deployment or scale-in without dropping connected users.
3. Readiness — tell the deployment infrastructure "is this node allowed to accept new requests."

The framework provides the metric instruments and the drain procedure at host shutdown. The app wires the meter name into its collection pipeline, and composes the readiness endpoint the deployment environment calls out of the public runtime query API.

Terms that appear for the first time:

Term	One-line explanation
Meter / instrument	A language-standard metric emission unit. counter, gauge, and histogram are instruments
OpenTelemetry (OTel)	The standard for collecting metrics/traces. Exported via Prometheus and other exporters
Relocate	The operation that moves a stateful object to a compatible target and puts the host into Relocated state
Shutdown	The operation that performs bounded cleanup of local resources with no new relocation
Readiness probe	The deployment infrastructure's status check asking "is it OK to accept new requests"

1. Runtime Metrics

The framework emits every instrument through one System.Diagnostics.Metrics.Meter named "zlink.framework". The app registers this canonical meter name in its collection pipeline.

// Wire the zlink meter into the OpenTelemetry Node SDK.
// "zlink.framework" is the canonical meter name the Framework emits instruments through.
const meterProvider = new MeterProvider({ readers: [prometheusExporter] });
meterProvider.getMeter('zlink.framework');

• There's no zlink-specific metrics API. The framework uses each language's standard metrics API directly. To collect without OTel, subscribe directly to the meter name "zlink.framework" from a MeterListener.
• If no listener is attached at all, an instrument update ends on a minimal-cost inactive path. Registering an instrument without turning it on has no effect on messaging performance.
• Choosing a dashboard and exporter is the app's job. The framework doesn't bundle a scrape server.

The instrument catalog is below. The labels, units, and kinds of the MeshNode, object/STREAM, and location/fanout instruments are set by Runtime Metrics §§3-5, and the drain instruments by Complete Host Relocation Flow §13.

Instrument	What it measures
zlink.stream.connections.active	Active STREAM connection count (CCU)
zlink.stream.connections.opened	Cumulative STREAM connections started
zlink.stream.connections.closed	Cumulative STREAM connections closed
zlink.spot.count	Active spot count
zlink.actor.count	Active Actor count
zlink.relocation.started	Cumulative Actor/User/Instance Spot relocations started
zlink.relocation.completed	Cumulative relocation terminal results
zlink.relocation.duration	Time from prepare to the terminal phase
zlink.relocation.bytes	Encoded size of the moved relocation payload
zlink.instance_spot.activations	Cumulative Instance Spot activation results
zlink.instance_spot.activation.duration	Time from first address resolution to Ready or terminal failure
zlink.instance_spot.pending.messages	Number of messages waiting at the activation barrier
zlink.instance_spot.pending.bytes	Payload bytes reserved at the activation barrier
zlink.instance_spot.claim.conflicts	Cumulative Instance location claim conflicts
zlink.mesh_node.peers.configured	Peer count present in the descriptor
zlink.mesh_node.peers.connected	Peer count with transport connected
zlink.mesh_node.peers.ready	Peer count that passed admission and handler readiness
zlink.mesh_node.channels.ready_members	Member count available for ChannelName select-one
zlink.mesh_node.channel.selection_failures	Count of times no member was available for select-one
zlink.mesh_node.requests.inflight	Requests currently waiting for a reply
zlink.mesh_node.request.duration	Time from request submit to terminal completion
zlink.mesh_node.request.timeouts	Cumulative request timeouts
zlink.mesh_node.messages.dropped	Cumulative one-way drops with a cause confirmed by the Framework
zlink.fanout.published	Cumulative classic fanout publishes
zlink.fanout.received	Cumulative classic fanout receives
zlink.fanout.dropped	Cumulative classic fanout drops with a cause confirmed by the Framework
zlink.location.store.errors	Cumulative Redis read/write/lease failures
zlink.location.owner_lease.renew.failures	Cumulative owner lease renewal failures
zlink.location.owner_lease.renew.lateness	Owner lease renewal delay versus the scheduled time
zlink.observability.events.overflow	Cumulative monitoring/trace observer queue overflows
zlink.host.state	The current host Framework runtime state
zlink.host.core_hwm.effective_budget	Effective Core HWM byte budget fixed at startup
zlink.host.core_hwm.applied	Sum of ordinary directional queue HWMs, excluding the completion lane
zlink.host.core_hwm.accounted	Current or epoch-peak Core-accounted bytes (state=current|peak)
zlink.host.core_hwm.completion_accounted	Current or epoch-peak completion-accounted bytes (state=current|peak)
zlink.host.core_hwm.blocked_ratio	Core blocked ratio in parts per million
zlink.host.application_job_queue.limit	Effective Application Job Queue permit limit fixed at startup
zlink.host.application_job_queue.jobs	Reserved, queued, in-use, or peak permits (state=reserved|queued|in_use|peak)
zlink.host.application_job_queue.capacity_waiters	Current number of permit-capacity waiters
zlink.host.application_job_queue.capacity_waits	Permit-capacity waits in the current measurement epoch
zlink.host.application_job_queue.capacity_wait_duration	Cumulative permit-capacity wait duration in the current epoch
zlink.host.application_job_queue.pressure_state	Current running · paused state (state)
zlink.host.application_job_queue.pressure_transitions	Transitions by destination state (state=running · paused)
zlink.host.application_job_queue.pause_duration	Current/cumulative pause seconds (state=current · cumulative)
zlink.host.application_job_queue.flow_state_config_failures	Failures to apply an absolute Core flow state
zlink.host.relocation.duration	Time from starting Host relocate to the terminal result
zlink.host.relocation.blocked	Count of host relocate calls that ended in Blocked
zlink.host.shutdown.duration	Time from starting Host shutdown to the terminal result
zlink.host.shutdown.forced	Count of host shutdown calls that ended via bounded teardown

1.1 Capacity Snapshot and Measurement Reset

The host runtime's capacity snapshot exposes the Core HWM and Application Job Queue status together. Use it to correlate the fixed startup configuration and effective limits with current/peak accounted bytes, reserved/queued/in-use permits, and capacity waits. Read the exact type and member names from the relevant per-language monitoring contract.

Resetting measurements starts a new epoch without changing capacity. Current gauges and configuration stay unchanged, including pressure state and current pause duration. Each peak is rebased to its current value, and epoch waits, pressure transitions, cumulative pause duration, and flow-state configuration failures become zero. An event concurrent with reset belongs to exactly one epoch. Always-on metrics deliberately do not timestamp every job or create a per-job queue-wait histogram; record such distributions only inside a bounded performance fixture. The exact snapshot and reset rules are in Runtime state query and operational diagnostics and the metric names, units, and labels are in Runtime metrics.

2. Relocate — Moving to Another Host While Keeping State

relocate(...) moves every User Spot, Instance Spot, and Actor alive on this host to another Serving node. It's an operation that targets the whole host, and the call itself doesn't terminate the host.

What's preserved. This means that what the client and other nodes were using remains unchanged after the move.

What's preserved	Meaning
SpotId/ActorId and ObjectGeneration	The logical ID the caller was using doesn't change. There's no need to re-announce the address
A not-yet-executed message and the accepted journal	Work still sitting in the queue at seal time resumes execution on the target
Timer registration and pending ticks	The name, period, options, and schedule cursor move together, so the target doesn't re-register them
Application state	Moved through the capture/Restore of the relocation adapter registered on the factory
A bound STREAM session's route	The client session is left alone, and the route is changed to point at the new owner

The procedure:

1. Preflight confirms every stateful object and target capability/capacity. If there's no eligible target, it ends in Blocked without changing source admission.
2. The runtime publishes the host as Relocating and schedules an infrastructure notification on the execution queue of each standalone Actor, Instance Spot, and User Spot aggregate.
3. Target kind/version eligibility is confirmed before source dispatch stops. When the notification reaches a turn boundary, only the currently executing turn finishes on the source; it starts no new application turn. Transport reception remains open and later messages enter the source ingress hold while target preparation is pending.
4. At seal time, the message that didn't run, the accepted journal, the logical timer registration/pending tick, and the optional Snapshot bytes are sent by the source directly to the target over the mesh connection. The moving state never passes through the Relocation Store, and the transfer stays within §2.2's chunk-size and in-flight-budget settings. The target installs its temporary queue before factory/Restore, and finishes journal staging before the owner/membership commit. Ordinary target staging uses the shared Application Job Queue reservation before receive and returns it after finite durable handoff to the retained-byte backlog. Relocation adds no outbound/inbound or capture/Restore capacity gate of its own; a backlog larger than the live-job limit later acquires runnable-turn permits progressively.
5. A SpotWide User Spot and its member Actors change owner/membership together in one aggregate commit. An Entry Spot's and a PerActor User Spot's Actors are each moved individually. Infrastructure relocation doesn't call the application's join/leave callbacks.
6. Relays the source hold after the target reports relay-ready, then submits the cutover control one-way. The target performs its owner CAS, merges the ordered backlog, finishes required lifecycle callbacks, and opens application dispatch. For a bound Actor it then sends the Session owner a one-way target-route update; neither control has a completion reply or ACK.
7. Once dispatch has ended for every source unit and every cutover submit has succeeded, the host transitions to Relocated. This source-side result does not mean it awaited target CAS or Session route application. Connections and infrastructure stay up until shutdown(...) is called.

A failure before the first relocation commit can restore the source queue and admission. After the first commit, there's no rollback to the source — target recovery continues, and exceeding the deadline ends in ForceStopped.

2.1 Relocation Unit by Execution Mode

Even within the same host, what is bundled into one relocation unit differs by Spot kind and execution mode. A SpotWide User Spot is a single aggregate together with its member Actors, so it commits together. An Entry Spot's and a PerActor User Spot's Actors are each an independent unit, so they move Actor by Actor, and in this case the Spot instance is a shell that doesn't carry state.

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Therefore, a PerActor User Spot's factory can only use RecreateOnRelocation() as its relocation approach. Each member Actor's factory decides its own policy separately. An Instance Spot has no Actor, so the Spot itself is the relocation unit.

2.2 Moving-State Transfer Settings

The moving state travels over the source–target mesh connection in chunks, and four server settings keep it from crowding out ordinary messages on the same connection. The defaults are fine to start with; the runtime never adjusts them on its own, so change them based on what you observe in your deployment.

Setting	Default	Purpose and tuning criterion
RelocationPayloadChunkLimit	256 KiB	Size of one chunk. Lower it if chunk transfers intrude on the latency target of ordinary messages sharing the connection
RelocationInFlightPayloadBudget	16 MiB	Total relocation bytes that may be in flight at once on one peer connection. 0 disables it. Lower it if relocation transfers eat into ordinary message bandwidth; raise it if host move throughput is capped by this budget
RelocationNodeInFlightPayloadBudget	0 (disabled)	Node-wide cap on concurrent transfers. Set it only when a node with many peer connections needs its total occupancy bounded
RelocationCutoverWaitTimeout	1,000ms	How long the target waits for a cutover retransmission. If the cutover_timeout counter is nonzero, adjust it to your deployment's round-trip time

When the budget is full, a new relocation unit waits before its seal, and the Actor/Spot keeps processing messages normally while it waits — no payload size is ever too large to start because of the budget. Internal protocol details such as the chunk format and verification rules are covered by Relocation Flow.

2.3 SafeToShutdown — When It's Safe to Terminate

Relocated means the source finished sending its cutovers, not that every caller caching the old route now points at the new owner. The source runtime publishes the SafeToShutdown state in its own runtime status once every unit's Message Follow can end and the cutover retransmission window has closed. A deployment orchestrator should confirm Relocated, then observe this state before calling shutdown — terminating before it's published is allowed, but the remaining follow routes disappear and requests from callers still caching the old route can end in Unavailable. State queries and change observation follow Runtime Status Queries And Operational Diagnostics.

The relocation window is observed as three separate segments — source stop (from seal to cutover submission), target resume (from the target's owner confirmation to dispatch opening), and route convergence (from cutover submission until the Message Follow route can be removed). The number of fallbacks that proceeded unverified after waiting for a cutover is published as the cutover_timeout counter. Metric names, units, and labels are owned by Runtime Metrics.

3. Shutdown — Terminating Without Moving

shutdown(...) terminates this host. Unlike §2, it doesn't move state to another node.

Calling it starts no new relocation; work already in progress either finishes within the given deadline or is settled as a failure. It then notifies the Entry, User, and Instance Spots' onClosing with the HostShutdown reason, and once that callback finishes, cleans up scope, authority, session, and topology resources. If no deadline is given, it's 30 seconds.

The state of any Spot cleaned up here doesn't survive. If your deployment automation needs to keep state alive while taking a host down, call relocate(...) before shutting down, confirm the result is Relocated, and only then move on to this call (the example in §4). When possible, also confirm the SafeToShutdown publication (§2.3).

A Spot's lifetime is independent of any request. A User/Instance Spot isn't closed just because an ordinary request finished. Likewise, preparing a nonexistent Instance Spot never starts from a separate address or manager create — only from attaching Instance intent to a SpotId direct call (06-spot §5).

4. Wiring Operational Calls and Readiness

The two operations above don't happen automatically. The application calls them directly on the framework runtime. This interface is a DI singleton that owns host maintenance.

The order used in deployment is "move first, and shut down only if it succeeded." Confirming Relocated and then observing the SafeToShutdown publication (§2.3) before terminating avoids failures for callers still caching the old route.

const result = await runtime.relocate({
  mode: ZLinkFrameworkRelocationMode.RollingUpdate,
  // Uses only eligible nodes on the specified new version.
  targetApplicationVersion: 12n,
  deadlineMs: 25_000
});

if (result.outcome === ZLinkFrameworkRelocationOutcome.Relocated) {
  await runtime.shutdown({ deadlineMs: 10_000 });
} else {
  logger.error(`host relocation blocked: ${result.reason}`);
}

PlannedMaintenance uses only a target on the same application version as the source. RollingUpdate requires a targetApplicationVersion greater than the source's, and uses only a target exactly at that version. If there's no eligible target, it waits until the deadline and then returns Blocked/TargetUnavailable. Cancellation ends only that waiter — a shared lifecycle operation that's already started keeps running.

A readiness endpoint combines the readiness of the host framework runtime with that of any component runtime required by the application.

// The readiness endpoint looks only at the host runtime's status.
const ready = runtime.status.isReady;
// Respond 503 if ready is false.

In a Kubernetes deployment, the setup looks like this.

# readiness probe → /healthz/ready — excluded from new-traffic targets the moment Draining starts
# preStop hook + terminationGracePeriodSeconds >= drain deadline — allows time for auto-drain to finish

4.1 Calling It Again or Overlapping Calls

Deployment automation retries on failure. So what happens when you make the same call twice is defined by contract.

Situation	Result
relocate called again with the same mode while one is in flight	Shares the deadline with the first operation. The later call doesn't extend the deadline
relocate called again with a different mode while one is in flight	Blocked with no wait — meaning an operation is already in progress
relocate called again after Blocked	Blocked isn't stored, so it re-checks the host's condition from scratch. This is the only result where retrying is meaningful
relocate called again after Relocated	Returns the original success result as-is. Doesn't move again
shutdown called again while one is in flight	Shares the same operation and stores the terminal result
shutdown called again after Stopped	Returns the stored result
relocate called while starting up, or in an error/stopped state	Blocked without touching admission

A caller's cancellation ends only that call. The shared operation itself isn't cancelled.

shutdown is never blocked. It proceeds even with no target, insufficient capacity, or no Relocation Store. So if shutdown gets confirmed while something is waiting on relocate, the waiter ends in Blocked — this is why you must keep to the order "move first, confirm success, then shut down."

If shutdown doesn't finish within its deadline, it performs only bounded cleanup and ends in a forced-termination result. A deadline overrun and a callback failure are distinguished by different result values.

4.2 What Stays Alive During a Transition

Relocating, Relocated, and Draining aren't "accepting nothing" states. Only starting something new is blocked — what's already accepted is processed through to completion.

	Relocating	Relocated	Draining
Selection by channel name	Excluded from new selection. The existing owner path is kept	Excluded from new selection	New admission closed
A request that directly names a node	Accepted until the unit seals	Not accepted	Ends with the shutdown result
Spot/Actor creation and join	Rejected	Rejected	Rejected
STREAM	New binding excluded. An existing session is handled via a barrier	New binding excluded	New session not accepted
An already-accepted request	Ends exactly once, via reply, error, timeout, or shutdown	Same	Same

Monitoring or observer callbacks never hold up termination. Even if code observing status runs for a long time, maintenance never waits for it.

5. MeshNode Runtime Control and Observation

A MeshNode registered with addRouteMesh is operated through two DI singletons.

Runtime options. Values that can be changed while serving are below. The remaining socket options (HWM, timeout) are exclusive to configureRouterSocket() before startup.

// Excludes it from new object placement
meshOptions.mesh('game.room').placementWeight = 0;
// Excludes it from new channel select-one
meshOptions.channel('game.room').weight = 0;

The two weights are independent and take effect on new selections while running. Placement weight is used only for Actor/Spot create and relocation target selection. Channel weight is used only for selecting new select-one targets for that server membership. Looking up an unregistered mesh or membership is a configuration error.

Status query — RouteMesh runtime. It provides one consistent snapshot and an ordered component event stream for one mesh. Host termination is owned by the framework runtime.

// The immutable current status of nodes/peers/channels
const snapshot = meshRuntime.snapshot('game.room');
const ready = meshRuntime.isReady('game.room');

for await (const observed of meshRuntime.observe('game.room', 64, signal)) {
  // observed.status carries the transition, observed.loss the missed count —
  // see the shared rule in the [11. Monitoring](11-monitoring.en.md) §2.
}

6. Host Lifecycle

The Framework runtime is tied to the host's start/stop as its lifecycle service. The channel/SPOT/STREAM runtime is created based on the roles registered at startup, and cleaned up at shutdown.

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• Configuration phase — finish every declaration before app.Run(). A bad configuration is rejected as an exception at host startup.
• Stopping — once the host shutdown signal arrives, it goes down in the order hosted service stop() → channel/SPOT/STREAM runtime cleanup.
• Fold background work into the same lifecycle using the host's standard lifecycle service.

6.1 Observing Status

Host relocate/shutdown state transitions are observed through the framework runtime's bounded status stream. The per-MeshName runtime provides a component snapshot, but doesn't create a separate termination authority or partial-drain operation.

for await (const observed of runtime.observe(signal)) {
  // Records the whole-host state, effective intent, and terminal outcome in sequence order.
  const status = observed.status;
  logger.log(
    `host lifecycle: ${status.state} ${status.relocationResult} ${status.terminationResult}`
  );
}

Observe the seven host lifecycle states as-is (preparing, serving, relocating, relocated, draining, stopped, error). The notation follows the language. The status's relocation/ termination results must match that operation's terminal result. To view it as numbers, use the zlink.host.* instruments from §1.

7. Related Documents

• Runnable verification examples for this chapter's contract: 13. Interface Catalog chapter §7 — the verification class FrameworkRuntimeContracts
• The formal contract: Complete Host Relocation Flow · Runtime Metrics
• Status observation and diagnostics: the 11. Monitoring
• The Spot where the application decides the relocation boundary: 06-spot §7