Uploaded image for project: 'Cassandra'
  1. Cassandra
  2. CASSANDRA-11060

Allow DTCS old SSTable filtering to use min timestamp instead of max

    XMLWordPrintableJSON

Details

    • Improvement
    • Status: Resolved
    • Normal
    • Resolution: Won't Fix
    • None
    • None

    Description

      We have observed a DTCS behavior when using TTLs where SSTables are never or very rarely fully expired due to compaction, allowing expired data to be "stuck" in large partially expired SSTables.

      This is because compaction filtering is performed on the max timestamp, which continues to grow as SSTables are compacted together. This means they will never move past max_sstable_age_days. With a sufficiently large TTL, like 30 days, this allows old but not expired SSTables to continue combining and never become fully expired, even with a max_sstable_age_days of 1.

      As a result we have seen expired data hang around in large SSTables for over six months longer than it should have. This is obviously wasteful and a disk capacity issue.

      As a result we have been running an extended version of DTCS called MTCS in some deployments. The only change is that it uses min timestamp instead of max for compaction filtering (filterOldSSTables()). This allows SSTables to move beyond max_sstable_age_days and stop compacting, which means the entire SSTable can become fully expired and be dropped off disk as intended.

      You can see and test MTCS here: https://github.com/threatstack/mtcs

      I am not advocating that MTCS be its own stand alone compaction strategy. However, I would like to see a configuration option for DTCS that allows you to specify whether old SSTables should be filtered on min or max timestamp.

      Attachments

        Activity

          People

            Unassigned Unassigned
            sbisbee Sam Bisbee
            Votes:
            0 Vote for this issue
            Watchers:
            3 Start watching this issue

            Dates

              Created:
              Updated:
              Resolved: