Disk space usage
When using the log block manager (the default on Linux), Kudu uses sparse files to
store data. A sparse file has a different apparent size than the actual amount of disk space it
uses. This means that some tools may inaccurately report the disk space used by Kudu. For
example, the size listed by ls -l does not accurately reflect the disk space
used by Kudu data files:
$ ls -lh /data/kudu/tserver/data
total 117M
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 160M Mar 26 19:37 0b9807b8b17d48a6a7d5b16bf4ac4e6d.data
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 4.4K Mar 26 19:37 0b9807b8b17d48a6a7d5b16bf4ac4e6d.metadata
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 32M Mar 26 19:37 2f26eeacc7e04b65a009e2c9a2a8bd20.data
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 4.3K Mar 26 19:37 2f26eeacc7e04b65a009e2c9a2a8bd20.metadata
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 672M Mar 26 19:37 30a2dd2cd3554d8a9613f588a8d136ff.data
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 4.4K Mar 26 19:37 30a2dd2cd3554d8a9613f588a8d136ff.metadata
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 32M Mar 26 19:37 7434c83c5ec74ae6af5974e4909cbf82.data
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 4.3K Mar 26 19:37 7434c83c5ec74ae6af5974e4909cbf82.metadata
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 672M Mar 26 19:37 772d070347a04f9f8ad2ad3241440090.data
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 4.4K Mar 26 19:37 772d070347a04f9f8ad2ad3241440090.metadata
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 160M Mar 26 19:37 86e50a95531f46b6a79e671e6f5f4151.data
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 4.4K Mar 26 19:37 86e50a95531f46b6a79e671e6f5f4151.metadata
-rw------- 1 kudu kudu 687 Mar 26 19:26 block_manager_instance
Notice that the total size reported is 117MiB, while the first file’s size is listed
as 160MiB. Adding the -s option to ls will cause
ls to output the file’s disk space usage.
The
du and df utilities report the actual disk space
usage by default.
$ du -h /data/kudu/tserver/data118M /data/kudu/tserver/data
The apparent size can be shown with the
--apparent-size flag to
du.
$ du -h --apparent-size /data/kudu/tserver/data1.7G /data/kudu/tserver/data