Jeff Jirsa created CASSANDRA-9666:
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             Summary: Provide an alternative to DTCS
                 Key: CASSANDRA-9666
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-9666
             Project: Cassandra
          Issue Type: Improvement
            Reporter: Jeff Jirsa
             Fix For: 2.1.x, 2.2.x


DTCS is great for time series data, but it comes with caveats that make it 
difficult to use in production (typical operator behaviors such as bootstrap, 
removenode, and repair have MAJOR caveats as they relate to 
max_sstable_age_days, and hints/read repair break the selection algorithm).

I'm proposing an alternative, TimeWindowCompactionStrategy, that sacrifices the 
tiered nature of DTCS in order to address some of DTCS' operational 
shortcomings. I believe it is necessary to propose an alternative rather than 
simply adjusting DTCS, because it fundamentally removes the tiered nature in 
order to remove the parameter max_sstable_age_days - the result is very very 
different, even if it is heavily inspired by DTCS. 

Specifically, rather than creating a number of windows of ever increasing 
sizes, this strategy allows an operator to choose the window size, compact with 
STCS within the first window of that size, and aggressive compact down to a 
single sstable once that window is no longer current. The window size is a 
combination of unit (minutes, hours, days) and size (1, etc), such that an 
operator can expect all data using a block of that size to be compacted 
together (that is, if your unit is hours, and size is 6, you will create 
roughly 4 sstables per day, each one containing roughly 6 hours of data). 

The result addresses a number of the problems with DateTieredCompactionStrategy:

- At the present time, DTCS’s first window is compacted using an unusual 
selection criteria, which prefers files with earlier timestamps, but ignores 
sizes. In TimeWindowCompactionStrategy, the first window data will be compacted 
with the well tested, fast, reliable STCS. All STCS options can be passed to 
TimeWindowCompactionStrategy to configure the first window’s compaction 
behavior.

- HintedHandoff may put old data in new sstables, but it will have little 
impact other than slightly reduced efficiency (sstables will cover a wider 
range, but the old timestamps will not impact sstable selection criteria during 
compaction)

- ReadRepair may put old data in new sstables, but it will have little impact 
other than slightly reduced efficiency (sstables will cover a wider range, but 
the old timestamps will not impact sstable selection criteria during compaction)

- Small, old sstables resulting from streams of any kind will be swiftly and 
aggressively compacted with the other sstables matching their similar 
maxTimestamp, without causing sstables in neighboring windows to grow in size.

- The configuration options are explicit and straightforward - the tuning 
parameters leave little room for error. The window is set in common, easily 
understandable terms such as “12 hours”, “1 Day”, “30 days”. The 
minute/hour/day options are granular enough for users keeping data for hours, 
and users keeping data for years. 

- There is no explicitly configurable max sstable age, though sstables will 
naturally stop compacting once new data is written in that window. 

- It remains true that if old data and new data is written into the memtable at 
the same time, the resulting sstables will be treated as if they were new 
sstables, however, that no longer negatively impacts the compaction strategy’s 
selection criteria for older windows. 

Patch provided for both 2.1 ( 
https://github.com/jeffjirsa/cassandra/commits/twcs-2.1 ) and 2.2 ( 
https://github.com/jeffjirsa/cassandra/commits/twcs )





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