Description
HDFS namenode can delete blocks very quickly, given the deletion happens as a parallel operation spread across many datanodes. One of the frequent anxieties I see is that a lot of data can be deleted very quickly, when a cluster is brought up, especially when one of the storage directories has failed and namenode metadata was copied from another storage. Copying wrong metadata would results in some of the newer files (if old metadata was copied) being deleted along with their blocks.
HDFS-5986 now captures the number of pending deletion block on namenode webUI and JMX. I propose pausing deletion of blocks for a configured period of time (default 1 hour?) after namenode comes out of safemode. This will give enough time for the administrator to notice large number of pending deletion blocks and take corrective action.
Thoughts?