Chapter 16. Apache HBase Operational Management

Table of Contents

16.1. HBase Tools and Utilities
16.1.1. Canary
16.1.2. Health Checker
16.1.3. Driver
16.1.4. HBase hbck
16.1.5. HFile Tool
16.1.6. WAL Tools
16.1.7. Compression Tool
16.1.8. CopyTable
16.1.9. Export
16.1.10. Import
16.1.11. ImportTsv
16.1.12. CompleteBulkLoad
16.1.13. WALPlayer
16.1.14. RowCounter and CellCounter
16.1.15. mlockall
16.1.16. Offline Compaction Tool
16.2. Region Management
16.2.1. Major Compaction
16.2.2. Merge
16.3. Node Management
16.3.1. Node Decommission
16.3.2. Rolling Restart
16.3.3. Adding a New Node
16.4. HBase Metrics
16.4.1. Metric Setup
16.4.2. Warning To Ganglia Users
16.4.3. Most Important RegionServer Metrics
16.4.4. Other RegionServer Metrics
16.5. HBase Monitoring
16.5.1. Overview
16.5.2. Slow Query Log
16.6. Cluster Replication
16.7. HBase Backup
16.7.1. Full Shutdown Backup
16.7.2. Live Cluster Backup - Replication
16.7.3. Live Cluster Backup - CopyTable
16.7.4. Live Cluster Backup - Export
16.8. HBase Snapshots
16.8.1. Configuration
16.8.2. Take a Snapshot
16.8.3. Listing Snapshots
16.8.4. Deleting Snapshots
16.8.5. Clone a table from snapshot
16.8.6. Restore a snapshot
16.8.7. Snapshots operations and ACLs
16.8.8. Export to another cluster
16.9. Capacity Planning and Region Sizing
16.9.1. Node count and hardware/VM configuration
16.9.2. Determining region count and size
16.9.3. Initial configuration and tuning
16.10. Table Rename

This chapter will cover operational tools and practices required of a running Apache HBase cluster. The subject of operations is related to the topics of Chapter 14, Troubleshooting and Debugging Apache HBase, Chapter 13, Apache HBase Performance Tuning, and Chapter 2, Apache HBase Configuration but is a distinct topic in itself.

16.1. HBase Tools and Utilities

Here we list HBase tools for administration, analysis, fixup, and debugging.

16.1.1. Canary

There is a Canary class can help users to canary-test the HBase cluster status, with every column-family for every regions or regionservers granularity. To see the usage, use the --help parameter.

$ ${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary -help

Usage: bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary [opts] [table1 [table2]...] | [regionserver1 [regionserver2]..]
 where [opts] are:
   -help          Show this help and exit.
   -regionserver  replace the table argument to regionserver,
      which means to enable regionserver mode
   -daemon        Continuous check at defined intervals.
   -interval <N>  Interval between checks (sec)
   -e             Use region/regionserver as regular expression
      which means the region/regionserver is regular expression pattern
   -f <B>         stop whole program if first error occurs, default is true
   -t <N>         timeout for a check, default is 600000 (milliseconds)

This tool will return non zero error codes to user for collaborating with other monitoring tools, such as Nagios. The error code definitions are:

private static final int USAGE_EXIT_CODE = 1;
private static final int INIT_ERROR_EXIT_CODE = 2;
private static final int TIMEOUT_ERROR_EXIT_CODE = 3;
private static final int ERROR_EXIT_CODE = 4;

Here are some examples based on the following given case. There are two HTable called test-01 and test-02, they have two column family cf1 and cf2 respectively, and deployed on the 3 regionservers. see following table.

RegionServertest-01test-02
rs1r1r2
rs2r2 
rs3r2r1

Following are some examples based on the previous given case.

16.1.1.1. Canary test for every column family (store) of every region of every table

$ ${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary
            
3/12/09 03:26:32 INFO tool.Canary: read from region test-01,,1386230156732.0e3c7d77ffb6361ea1b996ac1042ca9a. column family cf1 in 2ms
13/12/09 03:26:32 INFO tool.Canary: read from region test-01,,1386230156732.0e3c7d77ffb6361ea1b996ac1042ca9a. column family cf2 in 2ms
13/12/09 03:26:32 INFO tool.Canary: read from region test-01,0004883,1386230156732.87b55e03dfeade00f441125159f8ca87. column family cf1 in 4ms
13/12/09 03:26:32 INFO tool.Canary: read from region test-01,0004883,1386230156732.87b55e03dfeade00f441125159f8ca87. column family cf2 in 1ms
...
13/12/09 03:26:32 INFO tool.Canary: read from region test-02,,1386559511167.aa2951a86289281beee480f107bb36ee. column family cf1 in 5ms
13/12/09 03:26:32 INFO tool.Canary: read from region test-02,,1386559511167.aa2951a86289281beee480f107bb36ee. column family cf2 in 3ms
13/12/09 03:26:32 INFO tool.Canary: read from region test-02,0004883,1386559511167.cbda32d5e2e276520712d84eaaa29d84. column family cf1 in 31ms
13/12/09 03:26:32 INFO tool.Canary: read from region test-02,0004883,1386559511167.cbda32d5e2e276520712d84eaaa29d84. column family cf2 in 8ms

So you can see, table test-01 has two regions and two column families, so the Canary tool will pick 4 small piece of data from 4 (2 region * 2 store) different stores. This is a default behavior of the this tool does.

16.1.1.2. Canary test for every column family (store) of every region of specific table(s)

You can also test one or more specific tables.

$ ${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase orghapache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary test-01 test-02

16.1.1.3. Canary test with regionserver granularity

This will pick one small piece of data from each regionserver, and can also put your resionserver name as input options for canary-test specific regionservers.

$ ${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary -regionserver
            
13/12/09 06:05:17 INFO tool.Canary: Read from table:test-01 on region server:rs2 in 72ms
13/12/09 06:05:17 INFO tool.Canary: Read from table:test-02 on region server:rs3 in 34ms
13/12/09 06:05:17 INFO tool.Canary: Read from table:test-01 on region server:rs1 in 56ms

16.1.1.4. Canary test with regular expression pattern

This will test both table test-01 and test-02.

$ ${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase orghapache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary -e test-0[1-2]

16.1.1.5. Run canary test as daemon mode

Run repeatedly with interval defined in option -interval whose default value is 6 seconds. This daemon will stop itself and return non-zero error code if any error occurs, due to the default value of option -f is true.

$ ${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase orghapache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary -daemon

Run repeatedly with internal 5 seconds and will not stop itself even error occurs in the test.

$ ${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase orghapache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary -daemon -interval 50000 -f false

16.1.1.6. Force timeout if canary test stuck

In some cases, we suffered the request stucked on the regionserver and not response back to the client. The regionserver in problem, would also not indicated to be dead by Master, which would bring the clients hung. So we provide the timeout option to kill the canary test forcefully and return non-zero error code as well. This run sets the timeout value to 60 seconds, the default value is 600 seconds.

$ ${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase orghapache.hadoop.hbase.tool.Canary -t 600000

16.1.2. Health Checker

You can configure HBase to run a script on a period and if it fails N times (configurable), have the server exit. See HBASE-7351 Periodic health check script for configurations and detail.

16.1.3. Driver

There is a Driver class that is executed by the HBase jar can be used to invoke frequently accessed utilities. For example,

HADOOP_CLASSPATH=`${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase classpath` ${HADOOP_HOME}/bin/hadoop jar ${HBASE_HOME}/hbase-VERSION.jar

An example program must be given as the first argument.
Valid program names are:
  completebulkload: Complete a bulk data load.
  copytable: Export a table from local cluster to peer cluster
  export: Write table data to HDFS.
  import: Import data written by Export.
  importtsv: Import data in TSV format.
  rowcounter: Count rows in HBase table
  verifyrep: Compare the data from tables in two different clusters. WARNING: It doesn't work for incrementColumnValues'd cells since the timestamp is chan
      

16.1.4. HBase hbck

An fsck for your HBase install

To run hbck against your HBase cluster run $ ./bin/hbase hbck At the end of the command's output it prints OK or INCONSISTENCY. If your cluster reports inconsistencies, pass -details to see more detail emitted. If inconsistencies, run hbck a few times because the inconsistency may be transient (e.g. cluster is starting up or a region is splitting). Passing -fix may correct the inconsistency (This latter is an experimental feature).

For more information, see Appendix B, hbck In Depth.

16.1.5. HFile Tool

See Section 9.7.6.4.2, “HFile Tool”.

16.1.6. WAL Tools

16.1.6.1. FSHLog tool

The main method on FSHLog offers manual split and dump facilities. Pass it WALs or the product of a split, the content of the recovered.edits. directory.

You can get a textual dump of a WAL file content by doing the following:

 $ ./bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.wal.FSHLog --dump hdfs://example.org:8020/hbase/.logs/example.org,60020,1283516293161/10.10.21.10%3A60020.1283973724012 

The return code will be non-zero if issues with the file so you can test wholesomeness of file by redirecting STDOUT to /dev/null and testing the program return.

Similarly you can force a split of a log file directory by doing:

 $ ./bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.wal.FSHLog --split hdfs://example.org:8020/hbase/.logs/example.org,60020,1283516293161/
16.1.6.1.1. HLogPrettyPrinter

HLogPrettyPrinter is a tool with configurable options to print the contents of an HLog.

16.1.7. Compression Tool

See Section C.1, “CompressionTest Tool”.

16.1.8. CopyTable

CopyTable is a utility that can copy part or of all of a table, either to the same cluster or another cluster. The target table must first exist. The usage is as follows:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.CopyTable [--starttime=X] [--endtime=Y] [--new.name=NEW] [--peer.adr=ADR] tablename

Options

starttime

Beginning of the time range. Without endtime means starttime to forever.

endtime

End of the time range. Without endtime means starttime to forever.

versions

Number of cell versions to copy.

new.name

New table's name.

peer.adr

Address of the peer cluster given in the format hbase.zookeeper.quorum:hbase.zookeeper.client.port:zookeeper.znode.parent

families

Comma-separated list of ColumnFamilies to copy.

all.cells

Also copy delete markers and uncollected deleted cells (advanced option).

Args:

  • tablename Name of table to copy.

Example of copying 'TestTable' to a cluster that uses replication for a 1 hour window:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.CopyTable
--starttime=1265875194289 --endtime=1265878794289
--peer.adr=server1,server2,server3:2181:/hbase TestTable

Scanner Caching

Caching for the input Scan is configured via hbase.client.scanner.caching in the job configuration.

Versions

By default, CopyTable utility only copies the latest version of row cells unless --versions=n is explicitly specified in the command.

See Jonathan Hsieh's Online HBase Backups with CopyTable blog post for more on CopyTable.

16.1.9. Export

Export is a utility that will dump the contents of table to HDFS in a sequence file. Invoke via:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.Export <tablename> <outputdir> [<versions> [<starttime> [<endtime>]]]

Note: caching for the input Scan is configured via hbase.client.scanner.caching in the job configuration.

16.1.10. Import

Import is a utility that will load data that has been exported back into HBase. Invoke via:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.Import <tablename> <inputdir>

To import 0.94 exported files in a 0.96 cluster or onwards, you need to set system property "hbase.import.version" when running the import command as below:

$ bin/hbase -Dhbase.import.version=0.94 org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.Import <tablename> <inputdir>

16.1.11. ImportTsv

ImportTsv is a utility that will load data in TSV format into HBase. It has two distinct usages: loading data from TSV format in HDFS into HBase via Puts, and preparing StoreFiles to be loaded via the completebulkload.

To load data via Puts (i.e., non-bulk loading):

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.ImportTsv -Dimporttsv.columns=a,b,c <tablename> <hdfs-inputdir>

To generate StoreFiles for bulk-loading:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.ImportTsv -Dimporttsv.columns=a,b,c -Dimporttsv.bulk.output=hdfs://storefile-outputdir <tablename> <hdfs-data-inputdir>

These generated StoreFiles can be loaded into HBase via Section 16.1.12, “CompleteBulkLoad”.

16.1.11.1. ImportTsv Options

Running ImportTsv with no arguments prints brief usage information:

Usage: importtsv -Dimporttsv.columns=a,b,c <tablename> <inputdir>

Imports the given input directory of TSV data into the specified table.

The column names of the TSV data must be specified using the -Dimporttsv.columns
option. This option takes the form of comma-separated column names, where each
column name is either a simple column family, or a columnfamily:qualifier. The special
column name HBASE_ROW_KEY is used to designate that this column should be used
as the row key for each imported record. You must specify exactly one column
to be the row key, and you must specify a column name for every column that exists in the
input data.

By default importtsv will load data directly into HBase. To instead generate
HFiles of data to prepare for a bulk data load, pass the option:
  -Dimporttsv.bulk.output=/path/for/output
  Note: the target table will be created with default column family descriptors if it does not already exist.

Other options that may be specified with -D include:
  -Dimporttsv.skip.bad.lines=false - fail if encountering an invalid line
  '-Dimporttsv.separator=|' - eg separate on pipes instead of tabs
  -Dimporttsv.timestamp=currentTimeAsLong - use the specified timestamp for the import
  -Dimporttsv.mapper.class=my.Mapper - A user-defined Mapper to use instead of org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.TsvImporterMapper
        

16.1.11.2. ImportTsv Example

For example, assume that we are loading data into a table called 'datatsv' with a ColumnFamily called 'd' with two columns "c1" and "c2".

Assume that an input file exists as follows:

row1	c1	c2
row2	c1	c2
row3	c1	c2
row4	c1	c2
row5	c1	c2
row6	c1	c2
row7	c1	c2
row8	c1	c2
row9	c1	c2
row10	c1	c2
          

For ImportTsv to use this imput file, the command line needs to look like this:

 HADOOP_CLASSPATH=`${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase classpath` ${HADOOP_HOME}/bin/hadoop jar ${HBASE_HOME}/hbase-VERSION.jar importtsv -Dimporttsv.columns=HBASE_ROW_KEY,d:c1,d:c2 -Dimporttsv.bulk.output=hdfs://storefileoutput datatsv hdfs://inputfile
 

... and in this example the first column is the rowkey, which is why the HBASE_ROW_KEY is used. The second and third columns in the file will be imported as "d:c1" and "d:c2", respectively.

16.1.11.3. ImportTsv Warning

If you have preparing a lot of data for bulk loading, make sure the target HBase table is pre-split appropriately.

16.1.11.4. See Also

For more information about bulk-loading HFiles into HBase, see Section 9.8, “Bulk Loading”

16.1.12. CompleteBulkLoad

The completebulkload utility will move generated StoreFiles into an HBase table. This utility is often used in conjunction with output from Section 16.1.11, “ImportTsv”.

There are two ways to invoke this utility, with explicit classname and via the driver:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.LoadIncrementalHFiles <hdfs://storefileoutput> <tablename>

.. and via the Driver..

HADOOP_CLASSPATH=`${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase classpath` ${HADOOP_HOME}/bin/hadoop jar ${HBASE_HOME}/hbase-VERSION.jar completebulkload <hdfs://storefileoutput> <tablename>

16.1.12.1. CompleteBulkLoad Warning

Data generated via MapReduce is often created with file permissions that are not compatible with the running HBase process. Assuming you're running HDFS with permissions enabled, those permissions will need to be updated before you run CompleteBulkLoad.

For more information about bulk-loading HFiles into HBase, see Section 9.8, “Bulk Loading”.

16.1.13. WALPlayer

WALPlayer is a utility to replay WAL files into HBase.

The WAL can be replayed for a set of tables or all tables, and a timerange can be provided (in milliseconds). The WAL is filtered to this set of tables. The output can optionally be mapped to another set of tables.

WALPlayer can also generate HFiles for later bulk importing, in that case only a single table and no mapping can be specified.

Invoke via:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.WALPlayer [options] <wal inputdir> <tables> [<tableMappings>]>

For example:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.WALPlayer /backuplogdir oldTable1,oldTable2 newTable1,newTable2

WALPlayer, by default, runs as a mapreduce job. To NOT run WALPlayer as a mapreduce job on your cluster, force it to run all in the local process by adding the flags -Dmapreduce.jobtracker.address=local on the command line.

16.1.14. RowCounter and CellCounter

RowCounter is a mapreduce job to count all the rows of a table. This is a good utility to use as a sanity check to ensure that HBase can read all the blocks of a table if there are any concerns of metadata inconsistency. It will run the mapreduce all in a single process but it will run faster if you have a MapReduce cluster in place for it to exploit.

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.RowCounter <tablename> [<column1> <column2>...]

Note: caching for the input Scan is configured via hbase.client.scanner.caching in the job configuration.

HBase ships another diagnostic mapreduce job called CellCounter. Like RowCounter, it gathers more fine-grained statistics about your table. The statistics gathered by RowCounter are more fine-grained and include:

  • Total number of rows in the table.

  • Total number of CFs across all rows.

  • Total qualifiers across all rows.

  • Total occurrence of each CF.

  • Total occurrence of each qualifier.

  • Total number of versions of each qualifier.

The program allows you to limit the scope of the run. Provide a row regex or prefix to limit the rows to analyze. Use hbase.mapreduce.scan.column.family to specify scanning a single column family.

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.CellCounter <tablename> <outputDir> [regex or prefix]

Note: just like RowCounter, caching for the input Scan is configured via hbase.client.scanner.caching in the job configuration.

16.1.15. mlockall

It is possible to optionally pin your servers in physical memory making them less likely to be swapped out in oversubscribed environments by having the servers call mlockall on startup. See HBASE-4391 Add ability to start RS as root and call mlockall for how to build the optional library and have it run on startup.

16.1.16. Offline Compaction Tool

See the usage for the Compaction Tool. Run it like this ./bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.CompactionTool

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