GridGain Developers Hub

Data Rebalancing

Overview

When a new node joins the cluster, some of the partitions are relocated to the new node so that the data remains distributed equally in the cluster. This process is called data rebalancing.

If an existing node permanently leaves the cluster and backups are not configured, you lose the partitions stored on this node. When backups are configured, one of the backup copies of the lost partitions becomes a primary partition and the rebalancing process is initiated.

Rebalancing is configured per cache.

Configuring Rebalancing Mode

GridGain supports both synchronous and asynchronous rebalancing. In the synchronous mode, any operation on the cache data is blocked until rebalancing is finished. In the asynchronous mode, the rebalancing process is done asynchronously. You can also disable rebalancing for a particular cache.

To change the rebalancing mode, set one of the following values in the cache configuration.

  • SYNC — Synchronous rebalancing mode. In this mode, any call to the cache public API is blocked until rebalancing is finished.

  • ASYNC — Asynchronous rebalancing mode. Distributed caches are available immediately and load all necessary data from other available cluster nodes in the background.

  • NONE — In this mode no rebalancing takes place, which means that caches are either loaded on demand from the persistent storage whenever data is accessed, or populated explicitly.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd         http://www.springframework.org/schema/util         http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util.xsd">
    <bean class="org.apache.ignite.configuration.IgniteConfiguration" id="ignite.cfg">
        <property name="cacheConfiguration">
            <list>
                <bean class="org.apache.ignite.configuration.CacheConfiguration">
                    <property name="name" value="mycache"/>
                    <!-- enable synchronous rebalance mode -->
                    <property name="rebalanceMode" value="SYNC"/>
                </bean>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
</beans>
package com.gridgain.snippets;

import org.apache.ignite.Ignite;
import org.apache.ignite.Ignition;
import org.apache.ignite.cache.CacheRebalanceMode;
import org.apache.ignite.configuration.CacheConfiguration;
import org.apache.ignite.configuration.IgniteConfiguration;

public class RebalancingConfiguration {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        RebalancingConfiguration rc = new RebalancingConfiguration();

        rc.configure();
    }

    void configure() {
        IgniteConfiguration cfg = new IgniteConfiguration();

        CacheConfiguration cacheCfg = new CacheConfiguration("mycache");

        cacheCfg.setRebalanceMode(CacheRebalanceMode.SYNC);

        cfg.setCacheConfiguration(cacheCfg);

        // Start a node.
        Ignite ignite = Ignition.start(cfg);

        ignite.close();
    }

}
IgniteConfiguration cfg = new IgniteConfiguration
{
    CacheConfiguration = new[]
    {
        new CacheConfiguration
        {
            Name = "mycache",
            RebalanceMode = CacheRebalanceMode.Sync
        }
    }
};

// Start a node.
var ignite = Ignition.Start(cfg);
This API is not presently available for C++. You can use XML configuration.

Configuring Rebalance Thread Pool

By default, rebalancing is performed in one thread on each node. It means that at each point in time only one thread is used to transfer batches from one node to another, or to process batches coming from the remote node.

You can increase the number of threads that are taken from the system thread pool and used for rebalancing. A system thread is taken from the pool every time a node needs to send a batch of data to a remote node or needs to process a batch that came from a remote node. The thread is relinquished after the batch is processed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd         http://www.springframework.org/schema/util         http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util.xsd">
    <bean class="org.apache.ignite.configuration.IgniteConfiguration" id="ignite.cfg">

        <property name="rebalanceThreadPoolSize" value="4"/>

        <property name="cacheConfiguration">
            <list>
                <bean class="org.apache.ignite.configuration.CacheConfiguration">
                    <property name="name" value="mycache"/>
                </bean>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
</beans>
package com.gridgain.snippets;

import org.apache.ignite.Ignite;
import org.apache.ignite.Ignition;
import org.apache.ignite.cache.CacheRebalanceMode;
import org.apache.ignite.configuration.CacheConfiguration;
import org.apache.ignite.configuration.IgniteConfiguration;

public class RebalancingConfiguration {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        RebalancingConfiguration rc = new RebalancingConfiguration();

        rc.configure();
    }

    void configure() {
        IgniteConfiguration cfg = new IgniteConfiguration();

        cfg.setRebalanceThreadPoolSize(4);

        CacheConfiguration cacheCfg = new CacheConfiguration("mycache");
        cfg.setCacheConfiguration(cacheCfg);

        // Start a node.
        Ignite ignite = Ignition.start(cfg);

        ignite.close();
    }

}
This API is not presently available for C#/.NET. You can use XML configuration.
This API is not presently available for C++. You can use XML configuration.

Rebalance Message Throttling

When data is transferred from one node to another, the whole data set is split into batches and each batch is sent in a separate message. You can configure the batch size and the amount of time the node waits between messages.

<bean class="org.apache.ignite.configuration.IgniteConfiguration" id="ignite.cfg">
    <property name="rebalanceBatchSize" value="#{2 * 1024 * 1024}"/>
    <property name="rebalanceThrottle" value="100"/>
</bean>
package com.gridgain.snippets;

import org.apache.ignite.Ignite;
import org.apache.ignite.Ignition;
import org.apache.ignite.cache.CacheRebalanceMode;
import org.apache.ignite.configuration.CacheConfiguration;
import org.apache.ignite.configuration.IgniteConfiguration;

public class RebalancingConfiguration {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        RebalancingConfiguration rc = new RebalancingConfiguration();

        rc.configure();
    }

    void configure() {
        IgniteConfiguration cfg = new IgniteConfiguration();

        CacheConfiguration cacheCfg = new CacheConfiguration("mycache");

        cfg.setRebalanceBatchSize(2 * 1024 * 1024);
        cfg.setRebalanceThrottle(100);

        cfg.setCacheConfiguration(cacheCfg);

        // Start a node.
        Ignite ignite = Ignition.start(cfg);

        ignite.close();
    }

}
IgniteConfiguration cfg = new IgniteConfiguration
{
    CacheConfiguration = new[]
    {
        new CacheConfiguration
        {
            Name = "mycache",
            RebalanceBatchSize = 2 * 1024 * 1024,
            RebalanceThrottle = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, 100)
        }
    }
};

// Start a node.
var ignite = Ignition.Start(cfg);
This API is not presently available for C++. You can use XML configuration.

Other Properties

The following table lists the properties of CacheConfiguration related to rebalancing:

Property Description Default Value

rebalanceDelay

A delay in milliseconds before the rebalancing process starts after a node joins or leaves the topology. Rebalancing delay is useful if you plan to restart nodes or start multiple nodes at once or one after another and don’t want to repartition and rebalance the data until all nodes are started.

0 (no delay)

rebalanceOrder

The order in which rebalancing should be done. Rebalance order can be set to a non-zero value for caches with SYNC or ASYNC rebalance modes only. Rebalancing for caches with smaller rebalance order is completed first. By default, rebalancing is not ordered.

0

The following table lists the properties of IgniteConfiguration related to rebalancing:

Property Description Default Value

rebalanceBatchSize

The size in bytes of a single rebalance message. The rebalancing algorithm splits the data on every node into multiple batches prior to sending it to other nodes.

512KB

rebalanceTimeout

Timeout for pending rebalancing messages when they are exchanged between the nodes.

10 seconds

rebalanceBatchesPrefetchCnt

The number of batches generated by supply node at the start of the rebalancing procedure. For better rebalancing performance, supplier node can provide more than one batch at the start of rebalancing and provide more for all later requests.

2

rebalanceThreadPoolSize

Maximum number of threads that are used in rebalancing process.

min(4, max(1, AVAILABLE_PROCESSOR_CNT / 4))

rebalanceThrottle

Time between rebalance messages in milliseconds.

0 (disabled)

Monitoring Rebalancing Process