Stefan Richter created FLINK-7757:
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             Summary: RocksDB lock is too strict and can block snapshots in 
synchronous phase
                 Key: FLINK-7757
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-7757
             Project: Flink
          Issue Type: Bug
          Components: State Backends, Checkpointing
    Affects Versions: 1.3.2, 1.2.2
            Reporter: Stefan Richter
            Assignee: Stefan Richter
            Priority: Blocker
             Fix For: 1.4.0


{{RocksDBKeyedStateBackend}} uses a lock to guard the db instance against 
disposal of the native resources while some parallel threads might still access 
db, which might otherwise lead to segfaults.

Unfortunately, this locking is a bit to strict and can lead to situations where 
snapshots block the pipeline. This can happen when a snapshot s1 is running and 
somewhere blocking in IO while holding the guarding lock. A second snapshot s2 
can be triggered in parallel and requires to hold the lock in the synchronous 
part to get a snapshot from db. As s1 is still holding on to the lock, s2 can 
block here and stop the operator from processing further elements.

A simple solution could remove lock acquisition from the synchronous phase, 
because both, synchronous phase and disposing the backend are only allowed to 
be triggered from the thread that also drives element processing.

A better solution would be to remove long sections under the lock all together, 
because as of now they will always prevent the possibility of parallel 
checkpointing. I think a guard for the rocksdb instance would be sufficient 
that blocks disposal for as long as there are still clients potentially 
accessing the instance in parallel. This could be realized by keeping a 
synchronized counter for active clients and block disposal until the client 
count drops to zero.

This approach could also be integrated with triggering timers, which have 
always been problematic in the disposal phase are currently unregulated. In the 
new model, they could register as yet another client.



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