[SPARK-3682] Add helpful warnings to the UI

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Affects Version/s: 1.1.0
• Component/s: Web UI
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Sandy Ryza
• Created: 24/Sep/14 21:49
• Updated: 09/Feb/16 00:45
• Resolved: 09/Feb/16 00:45

Description

Spark has a zillion configuration options and a zillion different things that can go wrong with a job. Improvements like incremental and better metrics and the proposed spark replay debugger provide more insight into what's going on under the covers. However, it's difficult for non-advanced users to synthesize this information and understand where to direct their attention. It would be helpful to have some sort of central location on the UI users could go to that would provide indications about why an app/job is failing or performing poorly.

Some helpful messages that we could provide:

• Warn that the tasks in a particular stage are spending a long time in GC.
• Warn that spark.shuffle.memoryFraction does not fit inside the young generation.
• Warn that tasks in a particular stage are very short, and that the number of partitions should probably be decreased.
• Warn that tasks in a particular stage are spilling a lot, and that the number of partitions should probably be increased.
• Warn that a cached RDD that gets a lot of use does not fit in memory, and a lot of time is being spent recomputing it.

To start, probably two kinds of warnings would be most helpful.

• Warnings at the app level that report on misconfigurations, issues with the general health of executors.
• Warnings at the job level that indicate why a job might be performing slowly.

Issue Links

• is blocked by: SPARK-4145 Create jobs overview and job details pages on the web UI