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b45d5368b0
I noticed that the timeline directory contained files like this:
pg_xact_0000_0_000000000169C3C2_00000000016BB399
pg_xact_0000_0_00000000016BB399
pg_xact_0000_0_00000000016BB399_00000000016BDD06
pg_xact_0000_0_00000000016BDD06
pg_xact_0000_0_00000000016BDD06_00000000016C63AA
pg_xact_0000_0_00000000016C63AA
pg_xact_0000_0_00000000016C63AA_0000000001765226_DROPPED
pg_xact_0000_0_0000000001765226
pg_xact_0001_0_00000000016BB77E_00000000016BDD06
pg_xact_0001_0_00000000016BDD06
pg_xact_0001_0_00000000016BDD06_0000000001765226_DROPPED
pg_xact_0001_0_0000000001765226
Note how there is an image file after each DROPPED file. It's a waste of
time and space to materialize an image of the file at the point where it's
dropped, no one is going to request pages on a dropped relation. And it's
a correctness issue too: list_rels() and list_nonrels() will not consider
the relation as unlinked, unless the latest layer indicates so, and there
is no concept of a dropped image layer. That was causing test_clog_truncate
test to fail, when I adjusted the checkpointer to force a checkpoint more
aggressively.
There are a bunch more issues related to dropped rels and branching,
see https://github.com/zenithdb/zenith/issues/502. Hence this doesn't
completely fix the issue I saw with test_clog_truncate either. But it's
a start.
## Page server architecture
The Page Server has a few different duties:
- Respond to GetPage@LSN requests from the Compute Nodes
- Receive WAL from WAL safekeeper
- Replay WAL that's applicable to the chunks that the Page Server maintains
- Backup to S3
The Page Server consists of multiple threads that operate on a shared
repository of page versions:
| WAL
V
+--------------+
| |
| WAL receiver |
| |
+--------------+
+----+
+---------+ .......... | |
| | . . | |
GetPage@LSN | | . backup . -------> | S3 |
-------------> | Page | repository . . | |
| Service | .......... | |
page | | +----+
<------------- | |
+---------+ +--------------------+
| Checkpointing / |
| Garbage collection |
+--------------------+
Legend:
+--+
| | A thread or multi-threaded service
+--+
....
. . Component that we will need, but doesn't exist at the moment. A TODO.
....
---> Data flow
<---
Page Service
------------
The Page Service listens for GetPage@LSN requests from the Compute Nodes,
and responds with pages from the repository.
WAL Receiver
------------
The WAL receiver connects to the external WAL safekeeping service (or
directly to the primary) using PostgreSQL physical streaming
replication, and continuously receives WAL. It decodes the WAL records,
and stores them to the repository.
Repository
----------
The repository stores all the page versions, or WAL records needed to
reconstruct them. Each tenant has a separate Repository, which is
stored in the .zenith/tenants/<tenantid> directory.
Repository is an abstract trait, defined in `repository.rs`. It is
implemented by the LayeredRepository object in
`layered_repository.rs`. There is only that one implementation of the
Repository trait, but it's still a useful abstraction that keeps the
interface for the low-level storage functionality clean. The layered
storage format is described in layered_repository/README.md.
Each repository consists of multiple Timelines. Timeline is a
workhorse that accepts page changes from the WAL, and serves
get_page_at_lsn() and get_rel_size() requests. Note: this has nothing
to do with PostgreSQL WAL timeline. The term "timeline" is mostly
interchangeable with "branch", there is a one-to-one mapping from
branch to timeline. A timeline has a unique ID within the tenant,
represented as 16-byte hex string that never changes, whereas a
branch is a user-given name for a timeline.
Each repository also has a WAL redo manager associated with it, see
`walredo.rs`. The WAL redo manager is used to replay PostgreSQL WAL
records, whenever we need to reconstruct a page version from WAL to
satisfy a GetPage@LSN request, or to avoid accumulating too much WAL
for a page. The WAL redo manager uses a Postgres process running in
special zenith wal-redo mode to do the actual WAL redo, and
communicates with the process using a pipe.
Checkpointing / Garbage Collection
----------------------------------
Periodically, the checkpointer thread wakes up and performs housekeeping
duties on the repository. It has two duties:
### Checkpointing
Flush WAL that has accumulated in memory to disk, so that the old WAL
can be truncated away in the WAL safekeepers. Also, to free up memory
for receiving new WAL. This process is called "checkpointing". It's
similar to checkpointing in PostgreSQL or other DBMSs, but in the page
server, checkpointing happens on a per-segment basis.
### Garbage collection
Remove old on-disk layer files that are no longer needed according to the
PITR retention policy
TODO: Backup service
--------------------
The backup service is responsible for periodically pushing the chunks to S3.
TODO: How/when do restore from S3? Whenever we get a GetPage@LSN request for
a chunk we don't currently have? Or when an external Control Plane tells us?
TODO: Sharding
--------------------
We should be able to run multiple Page Servers that handle sharded data.