[HBASE-6772] Make the Distributed Split HDFS Location aware

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Abandoned
• Affects Version/s: 2.0.0
• Component/s: master, MTTR, regionserver
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Nicolas Liochon
• Created: 13/Sep/12 12:52
• Updated: 14/Jun/22 17:58
• Resolved: 14/Jun/22 17:58

Description

During a hlog split, each log file (a single hdfs block) is allocated to a different region server. This region server reads the file and creates the recovery edit files.
The allocation to the region server is random. We could take into account the locations of the log file to split:

• the reads would be local, hence faster. This allows short circuit as well.
• less network i/o used during a failure (and this is important)
• we would be sure to read from a working datanode, hence we're sure we won't have read errors. Read errors slow the split process a lot, as we often enter the "timeouted world".

We need to limit the calls to the namenode however.

Typical algo could be:

• the master gets the locations of the hlog files
• it writes it into ZK, if possible in one transaction (this way all the tasks are visible alltogether, allowing some arbitrage by the region server).
• when the regionserver receives the event, it checks for all logs and all locations.
• if there is a match, it takes it
• if not it waits something like 0.2s (to give the time to other regionserver to take it if the location matches), and take any remaining task.

Drawbacks are:

• a 0.2s delay added if there is no regionserver available on one of the locations. It's likely possible to remove it with some extra synchronization.
• Small increase in complexity and dependency to HDFS

Considering the advantages, it's worth it imho.

Issue Links

• is required by: HBASE-5843 Improve HBase MTTR - Mean Time To Recover