[HADOOP-1687] Name-node memory size estimates and optimization proposal.

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.13.1
• Fix Version/s: 0.15.0
• Assignee: Konstantin Shvachko
• Reporter: Konstantin Shvachko
• Created: 06/Aug/07 21:42
• Updated: 08/Jul/09 16:42
• Resolved: 07/Sep/07 20:55

Description

I've done some estimates on how much space our data structures take on the name-node per block, file and directory.

Brief overview of the data structures:
Directory tree (FSDirectory) is built of inodes. Each INode points either to an array of blocks
if it corresponds to a file or to a TreeMap<String, INode> of children INodes if it is a directory.
[Note: this estimates were made before Dhruba replaced the children TreeMap by ArrayList.]
Each block participates also in at least 2 more data structures.
BlocksMap contains a HashMap<Block, BlockInfo> of all blocks mapping a Block into a BlockInfo.
DatanodeDescriptor contains a TreeMap<Block, Block> of all blocks belonging to this data-node.
A block may or may not be contained also in other data-structures, like

UnderReplicatedBlocks
PendingReplicationBlocks
recentInvalidateSets
excessReplicateMap

Presence of a block in any of these structures is temporary and therefore I do not count them in my estimates.
The estimates can be viewed as lower bounds.

These are some classes that we are looking at here

class INode {
   String name;
   INode parent;
   TreeMap<String, INode> children;
   Block blocks[];
   short blockReplication;
   long modificationTime;
}

class Block {
   long blkid;
   long len;
}

class BlockInfo {
   FSDirectory.INode       inode;
   DatanodeDescriptor[]   nodes;
   Block                          block;
}

The calculations are made for a 64-bit java vm based on that
Reference size = 8 bytes
Object header size = 16 bytes
Array header size = 24 bytes

Commonly used objects:
TreeMap.Entry = 64 bytes. It has 5 reference fields
HashMap.Entry = 48 bytes. It has 3 reference fields
String header = 64 bytes.

The size of a file includes:

1. Size of an empty file INode: INode.children = null, INode.blocks is a 0-length array, and file name is empty. (152 bytes)
2. A directory entry of the parent INode that points to this file, which is a TreeMap.Entry. (64 bytes)
3. file name length times 2, because String represents each name character by 2 bytes.
4. Reference to the outer FSDirectory class (8 bytes)

The total: 224 + 2 * fileName.length

The size of a directory includes:

1. Size of an empty directory INode: INode.children is an empty TreeMap, INode.blocks = null, and file name is empty. (192 bytes)
2. A directory entry of the parent INode that points to this file, which is a TreeMap.Entry. (64 bytes)
3. file name length times 2
4. Reference to the outer FSDirectory class (8 bytes)

The total: 264 + 2 * fileName.length

The size of a block includes:

1. Size of Block. (32 bytes)
2. Size of BlockInfo. (64 + 8*replication bytes)
3. Reference to the block from INode.blocks (8 bytes)
4. HashMap.Entry referencing the block from BlocksMap. (48 bytes)
5. References to the block from all DatanodeDescriptors it belongs to.
   This is a TreeMap.Entry size times block replication. (64 * replication)

The total: 152 + 72 * replication

Typical object sizes:
Taking into account that typical file name is 10-15 bytes and our default replication is 3 we can say that typical sizes are
File size: 250
Directory size: 290
Block size: 368

Object	size estimate (bytes)	typical size (bytes)
File	224 + 2 * fileName.length	250
Directory	264 + 2 * fileName.length	290
Block	152 + 72 * replication	368

One of our clusters has

1. Files: 10 600 000
2. Dirs: 310 000
3. Blocks: 13 300 000

Total Size (estimate): 7,63 GB
Memory used on the name-node (actual reported by jconsole after gc): 9 GB

This means that other data structures like NetworkTopology, heartbeats, datanodeMap, Host2NodesMap,
leases, sortedLeases, and multiple block replication maps occupy ~1.4 GB, which seems to be pretty high
and need to be investigated as well.

Based on the above estimates blocks should be the main focus of the name-node memory reduction effort.
Space used by a block is 50% larger compared to a file, and there is more blocks than files or directories.

Some ideas on how we can reduce the name-node size without substantially changing the data structures.

1. INode.children should be an ArrayList instead of a TreeMap. Already done HADOOP-1565. (-48 bytes)
2. Factor out the INode class into a separate class (-8 bytes)
3. Create base INode class and derive file inode and directory inode classes from the base.
   Directory inodes do not need to contain blocks and replication fields (-16 bytes)
   File inodes do not need to contain children field (-8 bytes)
4. String name should be replaced by a mere byte[]. (-(40 + fileName.length) ~ -50 bytes)
5. Eliminate the Block object.
   We should move Block fields into into BlockInfo and completely get rid of the Block object. (-16 bytes)
6. Block object is referenced at least 5 times in our structures for each physical block.
   The number of references should be reduced to just 2. (-24)
7. Remove name field from INode. File or directory name is stored in the corresponding directory
   entry and does need to be duplicated in the INode (-8 bytes)
8. Eliminate INode.parent field. INodes are accessed through the directory tree, and the parent can
   be remembered in a local variable while browsing the tree. There is no need to persistently store
   the parent reference for each object. (-8 bytes)
9. Need to optimize data-node to block map. Currently each DatanodeDescriptor holds a TreeMap of
   blocks contained in the node, and we have an overhead of one TreeMap.Entry per block replica.
   I expect we can reorganize datanodeMap in a way that it stores only 1 or 2 references per replica
   instead of an entire TreeMap.Entry. (-48 * replication)

Note: In general TreeMaps turned out to be very expensive, we should avoid using them if possible.
Or implement a custom map structure, which would avoid using objects for each map entry.

This is what we will have after all the optimizations

Object	size estimate (bytes)	typical size (bytes)	current typical size (bytes)
File	112 + fileName.length	125	250
Directory	144 + fileName.length	155	290
Block	112 + 24 * replication	184	368

Issue Links

• incorporates: HADOOP-1743 INode refactoring
• incorporates: HADOOP-1759 File name should be represented by a byte array instead of a String
• incorporates: HADOOP-1766 Merging Block and BlockInfo classes on name-node.