Given https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-17237 I think it
makes sense.  At the least I think we should restore disk_access_mode
so that users are more aware of the options available.

Kind Regards,
Brandon

On Wed, Sep 6, 2023 at 10:50 AM Paulo Motta <pauloricard...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I've been bitten by OOMs with disk_access_mode:auto/mmap that were fixed by 
> changing to disk_access_mode:mmap_index_only. In a particular benchmark I got 
> 5x more read throughput on 3.11.x with disk_access_mode: mmap_index_only vs 
> disk_access_mode: auto/mmap.
>
> Changing disk_access_mode to mmap_index_only seems to be a common 
> recommendation on forums[1][2][3][4] and slack (find by searching 
> disk_access_mode in the #cassandra channel on https://the-asf.slack.com/).
>
> It's not clear to me when using the default disk_access_mode:auto/mmap is 
> beneficial, perhaps only when the read set fits in memory? Mick seems to 
> think on CASSANDRA-15531 [5], that mmap_index_only has a higher heap cost and 
> should be only used when warranted. However it's not uncommon to see people 
> being bitten with OOMs or lower read performance due to the default 
> disk_access_mode, so it makes me think it's not the best fool-proof default.
>
> Should we consider changing default "auto" behavior of "disk_access_mode" to 
> be "mmap_index_only" instead of "mmap" in 5.0 since it's likely safer and 
> perhaps more performant?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paulo
>
> [1] 
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72272035/troubleshooting-and-fixing-cassandra-oom-issue
> [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T137419
> [3] https://stackoverflow.com/a/55975471
> [4] 
> https://support.datastax.com/s/article/FAQ-Use-of-disk-access-mode-in-DSE-51-and-earlier
> [5] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-15531

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