[CHUKWA-444] Redefine Chukwa time series storage

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 0.5.0
• Component/s: Data Processors

Environment

Redhat EL 5.1, Java 6

• Release Note: Added HBaseWriter for storing time series data in HBase for faster random read/write.
• Assignee: Eric Yang
• Reporter: Eric Yang
• Created: 30/Dec/09 08:17
• Updated: 02/May/13 02:29
• Resolved: 21/Aug/10 21:19

Description

The current Chukwa Record format is not suitable for data visualization. It is more like an archive format which combines data from multiple sources (hosts), and group them into a sorted time partitioned sequence file. Most of people collected data for two reasons, archive and data analysis. The current chukwa record format is fine for archive, but it is not so great for data analysis. Data analysis could be further break down into two different types. 1) Data can be aggregated and summarized, such as metrics. 2) Data that can not be summarized, like job history. Type 1 data is useful for visualization by graph, and type 2 data is useful by plain text viewing or search for a particular event.

By the above rational, it probably makes sense to restructure Chukwa Records for data analysis. Outside of Hadoop world, rrdtools is great for time series data storage, and optimized for metrics from a single source, i.e. a host. RRD data file fragments badly when there are hundred of thousands of sources. Chukwa time series data storage should be able to combine multiple data sources into one Chukwa file to combat file fragmentation problem.

Issue Links

• depends upon: HBASE-2878 Move hbase-*-tests.jar to hbase-tests on public repository