Files
neon/pageserver/src/l0_flush.rs
Christian Schwarz b1cfc18161 L0 flush: opt-in mechanism to bypass PageCache reads and writes (#8190)
part of https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/7418

# Motivation

(reproducing #7418)

When we do an `InMemoryLayer::write_to_disk`, there is a tremendous
amount of random read I/O, as deltas from the ephemeral file (written in
LSN order) are written out to the delta layer in key order.

In benchmarks (https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/pull/7409) we can
see that this delta layer writing phase is substantially more expensive
than the initial ingest of data, and that within the delta layer write a
significant amount of the CPU time is spent traversing the page cache.

# High-Level Changes

Add a new mode for L0 flush that works as follows:

* Read the full ephemeral file into memory -- layers are much smaller
than total memory, so this is afforable
* Do all the random reads directly from this in memory buffer instead of
using blob IO/page cache/disk reads.
* Add a semaphore to limit how many timelines may concurrently do this
(limit peak memory).
* Make the semaphore configurable via PS config.

# Implementation Details

The new `BlobReaderRef::Slice` is a temporary hack until we can ditch
`blob_io` for `InMemoryLayer` => Plan for this is laid out in
https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/8183

# Correctness

The correctness of this change is quite obvious to me: we do what we did
before (`blob_io`) but read from memory instead of going to disk.

The highest bug potential is in doing owned-buffers IO. I refactored the
API a bit in preliminary PR
https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/pull/8186 to make it less
error-prone, but still, careful review is requested.

# Performance

I manually measured single-client ingest performance from `pgbench -i
...`.

Full report:
https://neondatabase.notion.site/2024-06-28-benchmarking-l0-flush-performance-e98cff3807f94cb38f2054d8c818fe84?pvs=4

tl;dr:

* no speed improvements during ingest,  but
* significantly lower pressure on PS PageCache (eviction rate drops to
1/3)
  * (that's why I'm working on this)
* noticable but modestly lower CPU time

This is good enough for merging this PR because the changes require
opt-in.

We'll do more testing in staging & pre-prod.

# Stability / Monitoring

**memory consumption**: there's no _hard_ limit on max `InMemoryLayer`
size (aka "checkpoint distance") , hence there's no hard limit on the
memory allocation we do for flushing. In practice, we a) [log a
warning](23827c6b0d/pageserver/src/tenant/timeline.rs (L5741-L5743))
when we flush oversized layers, so we'd know which tenant is to blame
and b) if we were to put a hard limit in place, we would have to decide
what to do if there is an InMemoryLayer that exceeds the limit.
It seems like a better option to guarantee a max size for frozen layer,
dependent on `checkpoint_distance`. Then limit concurrency based on
that.

**metrics**: we do have the
[flush_time_histo](23827c6b0d/pageserver/src/tenant/timeline.rs (L3725-L3726)),
but that includes the wait time for the semaphore. We could add a
separate metric for the time spent after acquiring the semaphore, so one
can infer the wait time. Seems unnecessary at this point, though.
2024-07-08 16:54:18 +01:00

47 lines
1.3 KiB
Rust

use std::{num::NonZeroUsize, sync::Arc};
use crate::tenant::ephemeral_file;
#[derive(Default, Debug, PartialEq, Eq, Clone, serde::Deserialize)]
#[serde(tag = "mode", rename_all = "kebab-case", deny_unknown_fields)]
pub enum L0FlushConfig {
#[default]
PageCached,
#[serde(rename_all = "snake_case")]
Direct { max_concurrency: NonZeroUsize },
}
#[derive(Clone)]
pub struct L0FlushGlobalState(Arc<Inner>);
pub(crate) enum Inner {
PageCached,
Direct { semaphore: tokio::sync::Semaphore },
}
impl L0FlushGlobalState {
pub fn new(config: L0FlushConfig) -> Self {
match config {
L0FlushConfig::PageCached => Self(Arc::new(Inner::PageCached)),
L0FlushConfig::Direct { max_concurrency } => {
let semaphore = tokio::sync::Semaphore::new(max_concurrency.get());
Self(Arc::new(Inner::Direct { semaphore }))
}
}
}
pub(crate) fn inner(&self) -> &Arc<Inner> {
&self.0
}
}
impl L0FlushConfig {
pub(crate) fn prewarm_on_write(&self) -> ephemeral_file::PrewarmPageCacheOnWrite {
use L0FlushConfig::*;
match self {
PageCached => ephemeral_file::PrewarmPageCacheOnWrite::Yes,
Direct { .. } => ephemeral_file::PrewarmPageCacheOnWrite::No,
}
}
}