[CASSANDRA-18753] Add an optimized default configuration to tests and make it available for new users

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Urgent
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 5.0-rc1, 5.0, 5.1
• Component/s: Packaging
• Change Category: Performance
• Complexity: Normal
• Platform: All

Source Control Link

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/pull/2896

Test and Documentation Plan

Added test configurations for the changes made by cassandra_latest.yaml for unit test, python dtests and in-jvm dtests.

• Assignee: Branimir Lambov
• Reporter: Branimir Lambov

Authors

Branimir Lambov

Reviewers

Berenguer Blasi

• Created: 15/Aug/23 09:41
• Updated: 15/May/24 20:34
• Resolved: 05/Apr/24 15:02

Description

We currently offer only one sample configuration file with Cassandra, and that file is deliberately configured to disable all new functionality and incompatible improvements. This works well for legacy users that want to have a painless upgrade, but is a very bad choice for new users, or anyone wanting to make comparisons between Cassandra versions or between Cassandra and other databases.

We offer very little indication, in the database packaging itself, that there are well-tested configuration choices that can solve known problems and dramatically improve performance. This is guaranteed to paint the database in a worse light than it deserves, and will very likely hurt adoption.

We should find a way to offer a very easy way of choosing between "optimized" and "compatible" defaults. At minimal, we could provide alternate yaml files. Alternatively, we could build on the storage_compatibility_mode concept to grow it into a setting that not only enables/disables certain settings, but also changes their default values.

Issue Links

• causes: CASSANDRA-19458 Minor bugs in generate.sh -d
• is blocked by: CASSANDRA-18594 Standalone Jenkinsfile
• is duplicated by: CASSANDRA-18754 We should offer an option for optimized default configuration
• is duplicated by: CASSANDRA-18755 Optimized default configuration
• relates to: CASSANDRA-19460 Fix tests to work with ULID SSTable identifiers to enable uuid_sstable_identifiers_enabled in cassandra-latest.yaml
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19043 RepairJobTest fails with paxos_variant: v2
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19046 Paxos V2 does not update individual fields of readMetrics
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19144 Python dtest replace_address_test.TestReplaceAddress is failing with Paxos V2
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19145 Python dtest TestWriteFailures.test_paxos is failing with Paxos V2
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19034 SelectTest fails when run with SAI index
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19042 Repair fuzz tests fail with paxos_variant: v2
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19085 In-jvm dtest RepairTest fails with storage_compatibility_mode: NONE
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19126 Streaming appears to be incompatible with different storage_compatibility_mode settings
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19167 Test failure: CQLVectorTest fails with heap_buffers
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19168 Test Failure: VectorUpdateDeleteTest fails with heap_buffers
• Testing discovered: CASSANDRA-19459 test_complementary_deletion_with_limit_on_partition_key_column_with_empty_partitions fails with SAI
• links to: CCM pull request
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #2896
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #3165
• links to: Python DTest pull request