Maximizing Performance when working with the S3A Connector

fadvise sequential

Read through the file, possibly with some short forward seeks.

The whole document is requested in a single HTTP request; forward seeks within the readahead range are supported by skipping over the intermediate data.

This delivers maximum sequential throughput —but with very expensive backward seeks.

Applications reading a file in bulk (DistCP, any copy operations) should use sequential access, as should those reading data from gzipped .gz files. Because the “normal” fadvise policy starts off in sequential IO mode, there is rarely any need to explicit request this policy.

fadvise random

Optimised for random IO, specifically the Hadoop PositionedReadable operations —though seek(offset); read(byte_buffer) also benefits.

Rather than ask for the whole file, the range of the HTTP request is set to the length of data desired in the read operation (Rounded up to the readahead value set in setReadahead() if necessary).

By reducing the cost of closing existing HTTP requests, this is highly efficient for file IO accessing a binary file through a series of PositionedReadable.read() and PositionedReadable.readFully() calls. Sequential reading of a file is expensive, as now many HTTP requests must be made to read through the file: there’s a delay between each GET operation.

Random IO is best for IO with seek-heavy characteristics:

• Data is read using the PositionedReadable API.
• Long distance (many MB) forward seeks
• Backward seeks as likely as forward seeks.
• Little or no use of single character read() calls or small read(buffer) calls.
• Applications running close to the S3 data store. That is: in EC2 VMs in the same datacenter as the S3 instance.

The desired fadvise policy must be set in the configuration option fs.s3a.experimental.input.fadvise when the filesystem instance is created. That is: it can only be set on a per-filesystem basis, not on a per-file-read basis.

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.experimental.input.fadvise</name>
  <value>random</value>
  <description>
  Policy for reading files.
  Values: 'random', 'sequential' or 'normal'
   </description>
</property>

HDFS-2744, Extend FSDataInputStream to allow fadvise proposes adding a public API to set fadvise policies on input streams. Once implemented, this will become the supported mechanism used for configuring the input IO policy.

fadvise normal (default)

The normal policy starts off reading a file in sequential mode, but if the caller seeks backwards in the stream, it switches from sequential to random.

This policy essentially recognizes the initial read pattern of columnar storage formats (e.g. Apache ORC and Apache Parquet), which seek to the end of a file, read in index data and then seek backwards to selectively read columns. The first seeks may be expensive compared to the random policy, however the overall process is much less expensive than either sequentially reading through a file with the random policy, or reading columnar data with the sequential policy.

Thread and connection pool sizes.

Each S3A client interacting with a single bucket, as a single user, has its own dedicated pool of open HTTP 1.1 connections alongside a pool of threads used for upload and copy operations. The default pool sizes are intended to strike a balance between performance and memory/thread use.

You can have a larger pool of (reused) HTTP connections and threads for parallel IO (especially uploads) by setting the properties

We recommend using larger values for processes which perform a lot of IO: DistCp, Spark Workers and similar.

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.threads.max</name>
  <value>20</value>
</property>
<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.connection.maximum</name>
  <value>20</value>
</property>

Be aware, however, that processes which perform many parallel queries may consume large amounts of resources if each query is working with a different set of s3 buckets, or are acting on behalf of different users.

For large data uploads, tune the block size: fs.s3a.block.size

When uploading data, it is uploaded in blocks set by the option fs.s3a.block.size; default value “32M” for 32 Megabytes.

If a larger value is used, then more data is buffered before the upload begins:

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.block.size</name>
  <value>128M</value>
</property>

This means that fewer PUT/POST requests are made of S3 to upload data, which reduces the likelihood that S3 will throttle the client(s)

Maybe: Buffer Write Data in Memory

When large files are being uploaded, blocks are saved to disk and then queued for uploading, with multiple threads uploading different blocks in parallel.

The blocks can be buffered in memory by setting the option fs.s3a.fast.upload.buffer to bytebuffer, or, for on-heap storage array.

1. Switching to in memory-IO reduces disk IO, and can be faster if the bandwidth to the S3 store is so high that the disk IO becomes the bottleneck. This can have a tangible benefit when working with on-premise S3-compatible object stores with very high bandwidth to servers.

It is very easy to run out of memory when buffering to it; the option fs.s3a.fast.upload.active.blocks" exists to tune how many active blocks a single output stream writing to S3 may have queued at a time.

As the size of each buffered block is determined by the value of fs.s3a.block.size, the larger the block size, the more likely you will run out of memory.

DistCP: Options to Tune

• -numListstatusThreads <threads> : set to something higher than the default (1).
• -bandwidth <mb> : use to limit the upload bandwidth per worker
• -m <maps> : limit the number of mappers, hence the load on the S3 bucket.

Adding more maps with the -m option does not guarantee better performance; it may just increase the amount of throttling which takes place. A smaller number of maps with a higher bandwidth per map can be more efficient.

DistCP: Options to Avoid.

DistCp’s -atomic option copies up data into a directory, then renames it into place, which is the where the copy takes place. This is a performance killer.

• Do not use the -atomic option.
• The -append operation is not supported on S3; avoid.
• -p S3 does not have a POSIX-style permission model; this will fail.

DistCP: Parameters to Tune

1. As discussed earlier, use large values for fs.s3a.threads.max and fs.s3a.connection.maximum.

2. Make sure that the bucket is using sequential or normal fadvise seek policies, that is, fs.s3a.experimental.input.fadvise is not set to random

3. Perform listings in parallel by setting -numListstatusThreads to a higher number. Make sure that fs.s3a.connection.maximum is equal to or greater than the value used.

4. If using -delete, set fs.trash.interval to 0 to avoid the deleted objects from being copied to a trash directory.

DO NOT switch fs.s3a.fast.upload.buffer to buffer in memory. If one distcp mapper runs out of memory it will fail, and that runs the risk of failing the entire job. It is safer to keep the default value, disk.

What is potentially useful is uploading in bigger blocks; this is more efficient in terms of HTTP connection use, and reduce the IOP rate against the S3 bucket/shard.

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.threads.max</name>
  <value>20</value>
</property>

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.connection.maximum</name>
  <value>30</value>
  <descriptiom>
   Make greater than both fs.s3a.threads.max and -numListstatusThreads
   </descriptiom>
</property>

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.experimental.input.fadvise</name>
  <value>normal</value>
</property>

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.block.size</name>
  <value>128M</value>
</property>

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.fast.upload.buffer</name>
  <value>disk</value>
</property>

<property>
  <name>fs.trash.interval</name>
  <value>0</value>
</property>

Tips to Keep Throttling down

If you are seeing a lot of throttling responses on a large scale operation like a distcp copy, reduce the number of processes trying to work with the bucket (for distcp: reduce the number of mappers with the -m option).

If you are reading or writing lists of files, if you can randomize the list so they are not processed in a simple sorted order, you may reduce load on a specific shard of S3 data, so potentially increase throughput.

An S3 Bucket is throttled by requests coming from all simultaneous clients. Different applications and jobs may interfere with each other: consider that when troubleshooting. Partitioning data into different buckets may help isolate load here.

If you are using data encrypted with SSE-KMS, then the will also apply: these are stricter than the S3 numbers. If you believe that you are reaching these limits, you may be able to get them increased. Consult the KMS Rate Limit documentation.

rename()

Avoid any algorithm which uploads data into a temporary file and then uses rename() to commit it into place with a final path. On HDFS this offers a fast commit operation. With S3, Wasb and other object stores, you can write straight to the destination, knowing that the file isn’t visible until you close the write: the write itself is atomic.

The rename() operation may return false if the source is missing; this is a weakness in the API. Consider a check before calling rename, and if/when a new rename() call is made public, switch to it.

delete(path, recursive)

Keep in mind that delete(path, recursive) is a no-op if the path does not exist, so there’s no need to have a check for the path existing before you call it.

delete() is often used as a cleanup operation. With an object store this is slow, and may cause problems if the caller expects an immediate response. For example, a thread may block so long that other liveness checks start to fail. Consider spawning off an executor thread to do these background cleanup operations.

OpenSSL Acceleration

Experimental Feature

As of HADOOP-16050 and HADOOP-16346, fs.s3a.ssl.channel.mode can be set to either default or openssl to enable native OpenSSL acceleration of HTTPS requests. OpenSSL implements the SSL and TLS protocols using native code. For users reading a large amount of data over HTTPS, OpenSSL can provide a significant performance benefit over the JSSE.

S3A uses the WildFly OpenSSL library to bind OpenSSL to the Java JSSE APIs. This library allows S3A to transparently read data using OpenSSL. The wildfly-openssl library is an optional runtime dependency of S3A and contains native libraries for binding the Java JSSE to OpenSSL.

WildFly OpenSSL must load OpenSSL itself. This can be done using the system property org.wildfly.openssl.path. For example, HADOOP_OPTS="-Dorg.wildfly.openssl.path=<path to OpenSSL libraries> ${HADOOP_OPTS}". See WildFly OpenSSL documentation for more details.

When fs.s3a.ssl.channel.mode is set to default, S3A will attempt to load the OpenSSL libraries using the WildFly library. If it is unsuccessful, it will fall back to the default_jsse behavior.

When fs.s3a.ssl.channel.mode is set to openssl, S3A will attempt to load the OpenSSL libraries using WildFly. If it is unsuccessful, it will throw an exception and S3A initialization will fail.

fs.s3a.ssl.channel.mode Configuration

fs.s3a.ssl.channel.mode can be configured as follows:

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.ssl.channel.mode</name>
  <value>default_jsse</value>
  <description>
    If secure connections to S3 are enabled, configures the SSL
    implementation used to encrypt connections to S3. Supported values are:
    "default_jsse", "default_jsse_with_gcm", "default", and "openssl".
    "default_jsse" uses the Java Secure Socket Extension package (JSSE).
    However, when running on Java 8, the GCM cipher is removed from the list
    of enabled ciphers. This is due to performance issues with GCM in Java 8.
    "default_jsse_with_gcm" uses the JSSE with the default list of cipher
    suites. "default_jsse_with_gcm" is equivalent to the behavior prior to
    this feature being introduced. "default" attempts to use OpenSSL rather
    than the JSSE for SSL encryption, if OpenSSL libraries cannot be loaded,
    it falls back to the "default_jsse" behavior. "openssl" attempts to use
    OpenSSL as well, but fails if OpenSSL libraries cannot be loaded.
  </description>
</property>

Supported values for fs.s3a.ssl.channel.mode:

The naming convention is setup in order to preserve backwards compatibility with the ABFS support of HADOOP-15669.

Other options may be added to fs.s3a.ssl.channel.mode in the future as further SSL optimizations are made.

WildFly classpath requirements

For OpenSSL acceleration to work, a compatible version of the wildfly JAR must be on the classpath. This is not explicitly declared in the dependencies of the published hadoop-aws module, as it is optional.

If the wildfly JAR is not found, the network acceleration will fall back to the JVM, always.

Note: there have been compatibility problems with wildfly JARs and openSSL releases in the past: version 1.0.4.Final is not compatible with openssl 1.1.1. An extra complication was older versions of the azure-data-lake-store-sdk JAR used in hadoop-azure-datalake contained an unshaded copy of the 1.0.4.Final classes, causing binding problems even when a later version was explicitly being placed on the classpath.

Disabling bucket existence checks

When an S3A Filesystem instance is created and initialized, the client checks if the bucket provided is valid. This can be slow. You can ignore bucket validation by configuring fs.s3a.bucket.probe as follows:

<property>
  <name>fs.s3a.bucket.probe</name>
  <value>0</value>
</property>

Note: if the bucket does not exist, this issue will surface when operations are performed on the filesystem; you will see UnknownStoreException stack traces.

Rate limiting parallel FileSystem creation operations

Applications normally ask for filesystems from the shared cache, via FileSystem.get() or Path.getFileSystem(). The cache, FileSystem.CACHE will, for each user, cachec one instance of a filesystem for a given URI. All calls to FileSystem.get for a cached FS for a URI such as s3a://landsat-pds/ will return that singe single instance.

FileSystem instances are created on-demand for the cache, and will be done in each thread which requests an instance. This is done outside of any synchronisation block. Once a task has an initialized FileSystem instance, it will, in a synchronized block add it to the cache. If it turns out that the cache now already has an instance for that URI, it will revert the cached copy to it, and close the FS instance it has just created.

If a FileSystem takes time to be initialized, and many threads are trying to retrieve a FileSystem instance for the same S3 bucket in parallel, All but one of the threads will be doing useless work, and may unintentionally be creating lock contention on shared objects.

There is an option, fs.creation.parallel.count, which uses a semaphore to limit the number of FS instances which may be created in parallel.

Setting this to a low number will reduce the amount of wasted work, at the expense of limiting the number of FileSystem clients which can be created simultaneously for different object stores/distributed filesystems.

For example, a value of four would put an upper limit on the number of wasted instantiations of a connector for the s3a://landsat-pds/ bucket.

<property>
  <name>fs.creation.parallel.count</name>
  <value>4</value>
</property>

It would also mean that if four threads were in the process of creating such connectors, all threads trying to create connectors for other buckets, would end up blocking too.

Consider experimenting with this when running applications where many threads may try to simultaneously interact with the same slow-to-initialize object stores.