[CASSANDRA-7404] Use direct i/o for sequential operations (compaction/streaming)

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Normal
• Resolution: Later
• Component/s: Legacy/Local Write-Read Paths, Local/Compaction
• Labels: performance
• Assignee: Ariel Weisberg
• Reporter: Jason Brown

Authors

Ariel Weisberg

Reviewers

Stefania Alborghetti

• Created: 16/Jun/14 22:52
• Updated: 16/Apr/19 09:31
• Resolved: 01/Jul/15 14:25

Description

Investigate using linux's direct i/o for operations where we read sequentially through a file (repair and bootstrap streaming, compaction reads, and so on). Direct i/o does not go through the kernel page page, so it should leave the hot cache pages used for live reads unaffected.

Note: by using direct i/o, we will probably take a performance hit on reading the file we're sequentially scanning through (that is, compactions may get slower), but the goal of this ticket is to limit the impact of these background tasks on the main read/write functionality. Of course, I'll measure any perf hit that is incurred, and see if there's any mechanisms to mitigate it.