Before this patch, the experimental TTL (expiration time) feature in
Alternator scans tables for expiration in a tight loop - starting the
next scan one second after the previous one completed.
In this patch we introduce a new configuration option,
alternator_ttl_period_in_seconds, which determines how frequently
to start the scan. The default is 24 hours - meaning that the next
scan is started 24 hours after the previous one started.
The tests (test/alternator/run) change this configuration back to one
second, so that expiration tests finish as quickly as possible.
Please note that the scan is *not* slowed down to fill this 24 hours -
if it finishes in one hour, it will then sleep for 23 hours. Additional
work would be needed to slow down the scan to not finish too quickly.
One idea not yet implemented is to move the expiration service from
the "maintenance" scheduling group which it uses today to a new
scheduling group, and modifying the number of shares that this group
gets.
Another thing worth noting about the configurable period (which defaults
to 24 hours) is that when TTL is enabled on an Alternator table, it can
take that amount of time until its scan starts and items start expiring
from it.
Signed-off-by: Nadav Har'El <nyh@scylladb.com>
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