Scaling out docs seem to fail

[jmwilkinson]

I am attempting to strictly follow the docs listed here:

https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/architecture/horizontal-scaling

This involves copy-pasting the configs and then updating hostnames and the cluster name, but essentially the configs are the same.

I can run the SHOW clusters; query successfully, but as soon as I run CREATE DATABASE db1 ON CLUSTER cluster_2S_1R;, the query simply hangs for three minutes then times out.

I have two questions around this:

1. The zookeeper config is necessary event when using clickhouse keeper, not zookeeper, correct? Assuming this is true, it would be nice to explicitly call this out in the docs, as the fact that the config block is labelled "zookeeper" but we are not actually using zookeeper (and want to avoid using it) is quite confusing.
2. Can someone confirm that the docs as written, if strictly followed, work? If they do not, obviously they should be updated. If they are working, I will need to troubleshoot how my implementation has gone wrong.

Additional context:

• I am using docker compose with the docker image to manage the cluster.
• I am mapping the configs into the docker containers. They load as expected.
• In general, the startup sequencing seems to be successful. If I have a config error, I can see it in the err.log file.
• I have run a number of queries showing the nodes appear to be clustered and functioning, but it is not entirely clear to me what clustered even means to ClickHouse.