"
Partition snapshots go away when the last read using the snapshot is done.
Currently we will synchronously attempt to merge partition versions on this event.
If partitions are large, that may stall the reactor for a significant amount of time,
depending on the size of newer versions. Cache update on memtable flush can
create especially large versions.
The solution implemented in this series is to allow merging to be preemptable,
and continue in the background. Background merging is done by the mutation_cleaner
associated with the container (memtable, cache). There is a single merging process
per mutation_cleaner. The merging worker runs in a separate scheduling group,
introduced here, called "mem_compaction".
When the last user of a snapshot goes away the snapshot is slided to the
oldest unreferenced version first so that the version is no longer reachable
from partition_entry::read(). The cleaner will then keep merging preceding
(newer) versions into it, until it merges a version which is referenced. The
merging is preemtable. If the initial merging is preempted, the snapshot is
enqueued into the cleaner, the worker woken up, and merging will continue
asynchronously.
When memtable is merged with cache, its cleaner is merged with cache cleaner,
so any outstanding background merges will be continued by the cache cleaner
without disruption.
This reduces scheduling latency spikes in tests/perf_row_cache_update
for the case of large partition with many rows. For -c1 -m1G I saw
them dropping from >23ms to 1-2ms. System-level benchmark using scylla-bench
shows a similar improvement.
"
* tag 'tgrabiec/merge-snapshots-gradually-v4' of github.com:tgrabiec/scylla:
tests: perf_row_cache_update: Test with an active reader surviving memtable flush
memtable, cache: Run mutation_cleaner worker in its own scheduling group
mutation_cleaner: Make merge() redirect old instance to the new one
mvcc: Use RAII to ensure that partition versions are merged
mvcc: Merge partition version versions gradually in the background
mutation_partition: Make merging preemtable
tests: mvcc: Use the standard maybe_merge_versions() to merge snapshots
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