Astyanax Thrift Frame Size Hardcoded - Breaks Ring Describe

[Eric Stevens <mi...@gmail.com>]

I know this list isn't the right place to discuss driver issues in general,
but I thought I'd offer a word of warning to anyone still using Astyanax
related to an issue we ran into over the weekend.

Astyanax has a hard coded maximum Thrift frame size.  There is a pull
request to expose it to configuration, but it has not been accepted (
https://github.com/Netflix/astyanax/pull/547).

The reason why this matters beyond "you're doing reads which are far too
large" is that Thrift is used by Astyanax for ring discovery
(RING_DESCRIBE), which it may be using under the hood even if you don't
think you are (several connection pool types imply RING_DESCRIBE and may
override your own alternate configuration).

When you exceed around 64,000 vnodes (250 nodes at 256 vnodes), ring
discovery no longer fits in a single Thrift frame.  Even if you increase
the maximum frame size in Cassandra, Astyanax will not take advantage of
it.  The consequence is that Astyanax will talk *only* to hosts in the
seeds list.  I've opened issue
https://github.com/Netflix/astyanax/issues/577

Astyanax is no longer maintained, so I don't really expect that to go
anywhere, which is why I thought it might be a good idea to issue a general
warning.  This should hopefully be a helpful nudge for anyone still using
Astyanax: it's time to find a new driver.

We bumped into this over the weekend during routine cluster expansion.
Very, very fortunately for us, we were just days away from retiring that
project as our very last Astyanax use case.  We were able to limp along by
providing a significant subset of our hosts in the seeds list, but that
would have been a difficult way to operate long term.

Re: Astyanax Thrift Frame Size Hardcoded - Breaks Ring Describe

[Eric Stevens <mi...@gmail.com>]

Sorry, I thought it was more or less formally deprecated, but a little
quick searching doesn't support the idea.  I could swear I recall reading
an article about how Netflix had mostly transitioned to Datastax Java
Driver, but I can't find that now... so maybe it was a dream?

However the activity graph on Github, and the number of open and
unresponded issues doesn't suggest a project under active development (I
think there's 1 commit this year?).  Thrift is frozen, so even if Astyanax
is still being tended, its days are probably numbered as long as it remains
Thrift centric.

That said, I think my declaration of the death of Astyanax was probably
greatly exaggerated.

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:45 PM, graham sanderson <gr...@vast.com> wrote:

> It is very stable for us; we don’t use it in many cases (generally older
> stuff where it was the best choice), but I think it is a little harsh to
> write it off
>
> On Apr 3, 2015, at 1:55 PM, Robert Coli <rc...@eventbrite.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Eric Stevens <mi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Astyanax is no longer maintained, so I don't really expect that to go
>> anywhere, which is why I thought it might be a good idea to issue a general
>> warning.  This should hopefully be a helpful nudge for anyone still using
>> Astyanax: it's time to find a new driver.
>>
>
> I'm not contesting, but do you have a citation for this? If so, providing
> it would strengthen your nudge. :D
>
> =Rob
>
>
>
>

Re: Astyanax Thrift Frame Size Hardcoded - Breaks Ring Describe

[graham sanderson <gr...@vast.com>]

It is very stable for us; we don’t use it in many cases (generally older stuff where it was the best choice), but I think it is a little harsh to write it off

> On Apr 3, 2015, at 1:55 PM, Robert Coli <rc...@eventbrite.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Eric Stevens <mightye@gmail.com <ma...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Astyanax is no longer maintained, so I don't really expect that to go anywhere, which is why I thought it might be a good idea to issue a general warning.  This should hopefully be a helpful nudge for anyone still using Astyanax: it's time to find a new driver.
> 
> I'm not contesting, but do you have a citation for this? If so, providing it would strengthen your nudge. :D
> 
> =Rob
>  

Re: Astyanax Thrift Frame Size Hardcoded - Breaks Ring Describe

[Robert Coli <rc...@eventbrite.com>]

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Eric Stevens <mi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Astyanax is no longer maintained, so I don't really expect that to go
> anywhere, which is why I thought it might be a good idea to issue a general
> warning.  This should hopefully be a helpful nudge for anyone still using
> Astyanax: it's time to find a new driver.
>

I'm not contesting, but do you have a citation for this? If so, providing
it would strengthen your nudge. :D

=Rob