Blackbird is a large-scale object store built at Rocket Fuel, which stores 100+ TB of data and provides real time access to 10 billion+ objects in a 2-3 milliseconds at a rate of 1 million+ times per second. In this talk (an update from HBaseCon 2014), we will describe Blackbird's comprehensive collections API and various examples of how it can be used to model collections like sets, maps, and aggregates on these collections like counters, etc. We will also illustrate the flexibility and power of the API by modeling custom collection types that are unique to the Rocket Fuel context.

1. Blackbird Collections
In-situ Stream Processing in HBase
Ishan Chhabra, Nitin Aggarwal, Deepankar Reddy
Rocketfuel Inc.

2. Quick Recap:
Blackbird @ Rocketfuel Inc.

3. Quick Recap:
Blackbird @ Rocketfuel Inc.

4. Collections:
At the center of all non-trivial
applications

5. Usual first attempt:
Read Modify Write
Read existing 100
elementsEvent
Write 101 elements

6. Problem:
Not sympathetic to
HBase Internals
Memstore bloat
Constant flushing
Compactions

7. Problem:
Asymptotic network
usage
DC 1 DC 2
Write 1: 101
elements
Write 2: 48
elements

8. Problem: Concurrency Bug
Read existing 100
elements
Event 1
Write 101 elements
100
elements
Read existing 100
elements
Write 101 elements
Event 2
101
elements

9. Append Only Collections:
Be sympathetic to HBase
Internals
Trivial example: Lists
But what about Sets, Maps, Counters,
etc. and domain specific collections?

10. Working example:
SegmentSet

11. Working example:
SegmentSet
Keep the latest entry only
for a segment
Atmost 1000 of the most
recently updated segments

12. Blackbird
Collections:
Logical Model
Collection of entries
Can only add elements to it
Apply series of functions during
read to enforce properties

13. Blackbird
Collections:
Logical Model
For every collection:
Define the structure
Define the series of functions f1,
f2, f3… to apply during read

14. So how would
SegmentSet work?
Initial State in DB

15. So how would
SegmentSet work?
Adding a new element in DB

16. So how would
SegmentSet work?
Enforce properties during read at client

17. Blackbird Collections:
HBase Implementation

18. Combined Column: 100 entries
views:4587
1 entry
views:2398
Logical Collection
2 entries
views:6798
1 entry
views:2983
Step 1: Write
appends to separate
columns

19. Step 2: Apply the
functions during reads
Combined Column: 100 entries
1 entry
2 entries 1 entry
104 entries 92 entries
f1, f2, …

20. But what about all the garbage
that is building up?

21. Step 3:
Normalization
Combined Column: 100 entries
1 entry
2 entries 1 entry
92 entries

22. Step 3:
Normalization
2 kinds of runs:
nightly and weekly
Nightly run only looks at subset
of data (data changed that day)
Weekly run looks at all the data

23. Step 3:
Normalization
Heavily optimized: < 1h for nightly run and 2-
3h for weekly run (~50TB of data)
Made fast by MR over snapshots
and bulkloads
No impact on live read performance

24. Blackbird Collections:
Updated Logical Model
Collection of entries
Can only add elements to it
Apply series of functions during reads
Apply series of functions during daily normalizationApply series of functions during weekly
normalization

25. Another Example:
Transient Counters

26. Another Example:
Transient Counters
Be able to increment/decrement counts
Remove entries if timestamp +
time to live < current time
Keep the latest 1000 entries only

27. Another Example:
Transient Counters
aggregate()
Expire()
limit_to_1000()

28. Another Example:
Transient Counters
aggregate() expire()During
read:
aggregate() expire() limit_to_1000()
Daily
Normalization:
aggregate() expire() limit_to_1000()
Weekly
Normalization:

29. Conclusion

30. Thank you!
Questions?
Reach us at:
ishan@rocketfuel.com
naggarwal@rocketfuel.com
dreddy@rocketfuel.com