The gc_grace_seconds is a very fragile and broken design inherited from
Cassandra. Deleted data can be resurrected if cluster wide repair is not
performed within gc_grace_seconds. This design pushes the job of making
the database consistency to the user. In practice, it is very hard to
guarantee repair is performed within gc_grace_seconds all the time. For
example, repair workload has the lowest priority in the system which can
be slowed down by the higher priority workload, so that there is no
guarantee when a repair can finish. A gc_grace_seconds value that is
used to work might not work after data volume grows in a cluster. Users
might want to avoid running repair during a specific period where
latency is the top priority for their business.
To solve this problem, an automatic mechanism to protect data
resurrection is proposed and implemented. The main idea is to remove the
tombstone only after the range that covers the tombstone is repaired.
In this patch, a new table option tombstone_gc is added. The option is
used to configure tombstone gc mode. For example:
1) GC a tombstone after gc_grace_seconds
cqlsh> ALTER TABLE ks.cf WITH tombstone_gc = {'mode':'timeout'} ;
This is the default mode. If no tombstone_gc option is specified by the
user. The old gc_grace_seconds based gc will be used.
2) Never GC a tombstone
cqlsh> ALTER TABLE ks.cf WITH tombstone_gc = {'mode':'disabled'};
3) GC a tombstone immediately
cqlsh> ALTER TABLE ks.cf WITH tombstone_gc = {'mode':'immediate'};
4) GC a tombstone after repair
cqlsh> ALTER TABLE ks.cf WITH tombstone_gc = {'mode':'repair'};
In addition to the 'mode' option, another option 'propagation_delay_in_seconds'
is added. It defines the max time a write could possibly delay before it
eventually arrives at a node.
A new gossip feature TOMBSTONE_GC_OPTIONS is added. The new tombstone_gc
option can only be used after the whole cluster supports the new
feature. A mixed cluster works with no problem.
Tests: compaction_test.py, ninja test
Fixes#3560
[avi: resolve conflicts vs data_dictionary]
a8ad385ecd