Thanks for the response, Yabin.  However, if there's an answer to my
question here, I'm apparently too dense to see it ;)

I understand that, since the system keyspace data was not there, it started
bootstrapping.  What's not clear is if they took over the token ranges of
the previous nodes or got new token ranges.  I'm mainly concerned about the
latter.  We've got the nodes back in place with the original data, but the
fear is that some data may have been moved off of other nodes.  I think
that this is very unlikely, but I'm just looking for confirmation.

On Thursday, October 20, 2016, Yabin Meng <yabinm...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Most likely the issue is caused by the fact that when you move the data,
> you move the system keyspace data away as well. Meanwhile, due to the error
> of data being copied into a different location than what C* is expecting,
> when C* starts, it can not find the system metadata info and therefore
> tries to start as a fresh new node. If you keep keyspace data in the right
> place, you should see all old info. as expected.
>
> I've seen a few such occurrences from customers. As a best practice, I
> would always suggest to totally separate Cassandra application data
> directory from system keyspace directory (e.g. they don't share common
> parent folder, and such).
>
> Regards,
>
> Yabin
>
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 4:58 PM, Branton Davis <branton.da...@spanning.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','branton.da...@spanning.com');>> wrote:
>
>> Howdy folks.  I asked some about this in IRC yesterday, but we're
>> looking to hopefully confirm a couple of things for our sanity.
>>
>> Yesterday, I was performing an operation on a 21-node cluster (vnodes,
>> replication factor 3, NetworkTopologyStrategy, and the nodes are balanced
>> across 3 AZs on AWS EC2).  The plan was to swap each node's existing 1TB
>> volume (where all cassandra data, including the commitlog, is stored) with
>> a 2TB volume.  The plan for each node (one at a time) was basically:
>>
>>    - rsync while the node is live (repeated until there were only minor
>>    differences from new data)
>>    - stop cassandra on the node
>>    - rsync again
>>    - replace the old volume with the new
>>    - start cassandra
>>
>> However, there was a bug in the rsync command.  Instead of copying the
>> contents of /var/data/cassandra to /var/data/cassandra_new, it copied it to
>> /var/data/cassandra_new/cassandra.  So, when cassandra was started after
>> the volume swap, there was some behavior that was similar to bootstrapping
>> a new node (data started streaming in from other nodes).  But there
>> was also some behavior that was similar to a node replacement (nodetool
>> status showed the same IP address, but a different host ID).  This
>> happened with 3 nodes (one from each AZ).  The nodes had received 1.4GB,
>> 1.2GB, and 0.6GB of data (whereas the normal load for a node is around
>> 500-600GB).
>>
>> The cluster was in this state for about 2 hours, at which point cassandra
>> was stopped on them.  Later, I moved the data from the original volumes
>> back into place (so, should be the original state before the operation) and
>> started cassandra back up.
>>
>> Finally, the questions.  We've accepted the potential loss of new data
>> within the two hours, but our primary concern now is what was happening
>> with the bootstrapping nodes.  Would they have taken on the token ranges
>> of the original nodes or acted like new nodes and got new token ranges?  If
>> the latter, is it possible that any data moved from the healthy nodes to
>> the "new" nodes or would restarting them with the original data (and
>> repairing) put the cluster's token ranges back into a normal state?
>>
>> Hopefully that was all clear.  Thanks in advance for any info!
>>
>
>

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