[IMPALA-10973] Empty scan nodes are scheduled to the (exclusive) coordinator

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Implemented
• Fix Version/s: Impala 4.1.0
• Component/s: Backend
• Labels: scalability scheduler
• Epic Color: ghx-label-10
• Assignee: Csaba Ringhofer
• Reporter: Csaba Ringhofer
• Created: 19/Oct/21 11:13
• Updated: 03/May/23 22:52
• Resolved: 20/Oct/21 17:52

Description

Currently fragments with scan nodes that have no scan ranges are scheduled to the coordinator, even if it is an exclusive coordinator:
https://github.com/apache/impala/blob/master/be/src/scheduling/scheduler.cc#L805

As "parent" fragments are often scheduled to be collocated with their children, the condition of "being scheduled to the coordinator" can spread through the plan tree.

This can be disastrous to scalability in clusters with lot of executors but few coordinators and is also very counter-intuitive, as scanning an empty table shouldn't have a major effect on the query.

To reproduce locally:
bin/start-impala-cluster.py --use_exclusive_coordinators -c 1
in Impala shell:
select id from functional.alltypes;
profile; – scan nodes will be scheduled to 2 hosts

select f2 from functional.emptytable union all select id from functional.alltypes;
profile; – scan nodes will be scheduled to 3 hosts