A Look Into Percona XtraDB Cluster Non-Blocking Operation for Online Schema Upgr...

has introduced a new option to perform online schema modifications: NBO (Non-Blocking Operation).

When using PXC, the cluster relies on the wsrep_OSU_method parameter to define the Online Schema Upgrade (OSU) method the node uses to replicate DDL statements. 

Until now, we normally have three options:

• Use Total Isolation Order (TOI, the default)
• Use Rolling Schema Upgrade (RSU)
• Use Percona’s online schema change tool (TOI + PTOSC)

Each method has some positive and negative aspects. TOI will lock the whole cluster from being able to accept data modifications for the entire time it takes to perform the DDL operation. RSU will misalign the schema definition between the nodes, and in any case, the node performing the DDL operation is still locked. Finally, TOI+PTOSC will rely on creating triggers and copying data, so in some cases, this can be very impactful. 

The new Non-Blocking Operation (NBO) method is to help to reduce the impact on the cluster and make it easier to perform some DDL operations.

At the moment we only support a limited set of operations with NBO like:

• ALTER INDEX
• CREATE INDEX
• DROP INDEX

Any other command will result in an error message ER_NOT_SUPPORTED_YET.

But let us see how it works and what the impact is while we will also compare it with the default method TOI.

What we will do is work with four connections:

1 – to perform ddl
2 – to perform insert data in the table being altered
3 – to perform insert data on a different table
4-5 – checking the other two nodes operations

PXC must be at least Version 8.0.25-15.1.

The table we will modify is :

And contains ~five million rows.

The Commands

Connection 1:

Connection 2:

Connection 3:

Connections 4-5:

Operations

• Start inserts from connections
• Start commands in connections 4 – 5 on the other nodes
• Execute: 
  • For TOI 
    • Shell

      DC1-1(root@localhost) [windmills_s]>SET SESSION wsrep_OSU_method=TOI;
  • For NBO
    • Shell

      DC1-1(root@localhost) [windmills_s]>SET SESSION wsrep_OSU_method=NBO;
  • For both
    • Shell

      DC1-1(root@localhost) [windmills_s]>ALTER TABLE windmills_test ADD INDEX idx_1 (`uuid`,`active`), ALGORITHM=INPLACE, LOCK=shared;

Let’s Run It

Altering a Table with TOI

Inserts in the altering table (connection 2):

Inserts on the other table (connection 3):

On the other nodes at the same time of the ALTER we can see:

In short, we have the whole cluster locked for ~64 seconds. During this period of time, all the operations to modify data or structure were on hold. 

Let’s Now Try With NBO

Inserts in the altering table:

Inserts on the other table:

On the other nodes at the same time of the ALTER we can see:

In this case, what is also interesting to note is that:

1. We have a moment of metalock:
   1. Shell

      110174 pmm 127.0.0.1:42728 NULL Query 2 Waiting for table metadata lock  SELECT x FROM information_schema.tables  WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'windmills_s' 1486 10    0
   2. Shell

      110068  system user connecting host windmills_s Connect 111 closing tables ALTER TABLE windmills_test ADD INDEX idx_1 (`uuid`,`active`), ALGORITHM=INPLACE 111000 0 0
2. The execution time is longer

Summarizing:

What is Happening? What are the Differences and Why Does it Take Longer with NBO?

Let’s see at a very high level how the two work:

• TOI: when you issue a DDL like ADD INDEX a metadata lock is taken on the table and it will be released only at the end of the operation. During this time, you cannot:
  • Perform DMLs on any cluster node
  • Alter another table in the cluster
• NBO: the metadata lock is taken at the start and at the end for a very brief period of time. The ADD INDEX operation will then work on each node independently. The lock taken at the end is to have all the nodes agree on the operation and commit or rollback (using cluster error voting). This final phase costs a bit more in time and is what adds a few seconds to the operation execution. But during the operation:
  • You can alter another table (using NBO)
  • You can continue to insert data, except in the table(s) you are altering.
  • On node crash, the operation will continue on the other nodes, and if successful it will persist.  

In short, the cluster server behavior changes significantly when using NBO, offering significant flexibility compared to TOI. The cost in time should not linearly increase with the dimension of the table, but more in relation to the single node efficiency in performing the ALTER operation.       

Conclusion

NBO can be significantly helpful to reduce the impact of DDL on the cluster, for now, limited to the widely used creation/modification/drop of an index. But in the future … we may expand it. 

The feature is still a technology preview, so do not trust it in production, but test it and let us know what you think. 

Final comment: another distribution has introduced NBO, but only if you buy the enterprise version.

Percona, which is truly open source with facts not just words, has implemented NBO in standard PXC, and the code is fully open source. This is not the first one, but just another of the many features Percona is offering for free while others ask you to buy the enterprise version.

Enjoy the product and let us have your feedback! Great MySQL to all!